THE LUGIA CHRONICLES  AFTER CHRONICLES  THE RPGS
by ArkNorth
Summary: Chapter Four - TEAM ROCKET'S FIRST STAND - Team Rocket, Charm, North and the MewTwos must battle Mauvais and their pasts to protect the children and the released townfolk.
1. Team Rocket's Haunted Hayride

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**T H E ¤ L U G I A ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**

**A F T E R ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**  
**T h e ¤ R P G / S**

Greetings, I'm R. A. Stott, the co-creator of _THE __LUGIA __CHRONICLES _(TLC) posted elsewhere here on FFN. And if you've just read the title of this monster I'm about to drop on you, you're probably asking yourself what the heck is an RPG/S? (Pronounced Arr Pee Gee Slash Ess)

Well any of us who are FanFic fiends and/or posters on traditional BBSs, LiveJournals and the occasional BLOGs know that an RPG is short for Roll Playing Game. But what is a /S?

A '/S' means that the rules for this type of roll playing game is that the posts are to be Story Posts – not short burst of speech or single word addition – no script style drop-ins – these are FULL PARAGRAPH monster posts, some of which could or would take pages to get through – in other words – CHAPTERS.

So? Big deal you say? What's that got to do with my PokéReading of this PokéFic? Not much really, only that the source for this story came from one of the longest RPGs ever on the two boards that it ran on. Here's the story behind the story…

I had a group following who loved _**The **__**Lugia **__**Chronicles **__**(TLC)**_ when it was originally posted on the defunct **Team ****Rocket****'****s ****Headquarters ****NEXT** board back in the summer of 1999 through the summer of 2000. In September of 2000, shortly before the old board shut down and the new board, **TRHQ2**, opened, having recently posted the final chapters of TLC, I announced on the Roll Playing forum a follow-up story that, rather than be simply myself dropping new chapters out in the Fan Fiction forums, would be posted on the Roll Playing board, and involve anyone who wished to put their ideas in and add their own plots. The idea was to let the kids create circumstances that I would then come along and plop monster chapters on, allowing the co-authors to reap what they sowed. And brother, did they ever sow! And thus _**TEAM **__**ROCKET**__**'**__**S **__**HAUNTED **__**HAYRIDE **_was born.

In the summer of 2001, as the old board was phased out, and the new board took over, the game was transferred lock, stock and paragraph to the new Roll Playing forum and given a new name **– **_**AFTER **__**CHRONICLES**__** – **__**The **__**Hayride**_. There, it added to its already staggering post counts. With over 1200 total entries, 750+ of which were full story chapters, when it finally was put to bed in August of 2005 it just blew my mind the size it had become. (With all the flotsam and nonsense posts removed leaving just the actual chapter entries, _Hayride_runs 800+ pages on Word *1) An incredible amount of talent, skills and just plain old chutzpah were spent on this project, and I'm proud of each and every 'author/player' who joined in and grew along with the story. Many of these kids have grown and are in the world today making things better for us all – god love 'em! Not everyone stayed to the end, and some joined in mid way – but I want to thank each and every one of them for allowing us to see their creativity, for allowing us 'others' to actually use their original characters without screaming foul, and for giving us all their gift of being partners in one hell of a story!

In April of 2007, the TRHQ2 board had all of its posts deleted by either accident or vandalism – years of stories and creative works by these kids were thought lost. Fortunately some of us old codgers thought to back-up some of these great huge memory hogging story-based RPG/S' before that, so the work here can be seen by those who wish to see what the hey-day of a fad (Pokémon, if you hadn't guessed) was like. Here's to the kids – Ya gotta love 'em! I sure do!

_R. A. Stott – ArkNorth Productions/DMS – June 2007_

Afterthought – During the summer of 2007 through January 2008, having been given the 'keys' so to speak of the old TRHQ2 BBS, PBM and I worked with the folks at ezBoards and their successors, Yuku, to restore as much of the old site as possible. I am happy to note that the majority of the old board was restored, and is currently available again for use, with many of the classic posts and stories preserved for fans and friends alike to rummage through once again. To find it, simply Google 'TRHQ2' and have fun!

Cheers!

_R. A. Stott – September 2011_

**A F T E R ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**  
**T h e ¤ R P G / S**

Based on the FanFic series

**T H E ¤ L U G I A ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**

By Anne Ruecroft & R. A. Stott

Compiled, edited and rewritten by R. A. Stott

Contributing Authors for this chapter -

ArkNorth, PeanutButterMewTwo, and Baby Jigglypuff

* * *

Chapter One

**TEAM ROCKET'S HAUNTED HAYRIDE**

October 11th. It was nearly a year since the affair with the Black Lugia had cut a swath of destruction and death on the Prime Level of the PokéWorlds. Professor Robert North sat back in his seat in the core of what was known as Tech Lab One, Team Rocket's Special Technical Services lab. It was first thing in the morning, and this time was set aside to read inter-office memos and mail. It was one of few things he found tiresome being on this level of reality. He had become tired of all the political turmoil and rebuilding going on up on the Prime Level that he decided on taking a break from it all and temporarily move down to Level 1.1. It was calming, but some of that level's Team Rocket's habits were a bit irritating. Giovanni, for example, was quite fond of memos. And that morning the top one caught his attention as it was headed by a sad looking Halloween pumpkin and was on glaringly nasty looking orange paper.

"Oh god, what is he up to now?" he mumbled to himself as he tried to drink his coffee with a straight face.

"Tis the month of spooks and goblins, Haunters and Gengars, and the occasional Gastly," the memo began. "The Sylph Company is having their annual Haunted Hayride again this year, spread across the company headquarters' acres of land."

North sighed. This was going to be ugly, he just knew it.

"As usual, all Team Rocket operatives are to _volunteer_for this duty - your mission - entertain the kiddies and parents, while attempting to steal their PokéBalls! Now get at it!" This last bit was followed by a happy Jack-o-lantern shouting out "Prepare for trouble!"

North shook his head as he dropped the memo into a convenient shredder. He then tapped a button on his control board.

"George," he called into a com unit, "what's my schedule for the rest of the month?"

The Golden R communications officer rummaged through a date-book. "It looks like you have two meetings and a staff operations update by month's end," he replied. "Why?"

North grunted as the last of the diced orange memo departed for places unknown. "Cancel them," he said. "I need a break from this break!"

"Very well sir!" George replied as he updated the itinerary. "Any idea on just what and where to yet?"

North tapped his chin. "Book me on the next flight to the Isle of Mann… I want to see just what a PokéManx Cat looks like."

* * *

Wednesday, October 11th, 2000 – the first day of the Sylph Company's Annual Hayride and Fright Festival. Six hay wagons were to be used and would depart every fifteen minutes, or so it was supposed to be. But one of the children had brought along his Charmander, and with all that combustible material, the Rockets were lucky to only loose just one vehicle.

"Alright everyone!" James barked from the front of the wagon. "Single file! That's it!"

A yellow-haired kid who was carrying a plush Persian stared at James. "Yo man, what are YOU supposed to be?" he sarcastically asked.

James looked at his disguise. "I'm Jack! Jack the PUMPKIN KING!"

"More like the Pumpkin Dweeb!" the kid ribbed.

"Just get on da wagon ya twoip!" Meowth hissed.

"And what are you?" the kid huffed. "At least your costume ain't as lame as this dork's is!"

Meowth snarled. "Listen you's! What I am is a little guy in a little suit whose gonna show ya's a little FURY SWIPE if ya's don't GET ON DA WAGON! - Oh, and would you please put all your PokéBalls in dis box fer da safety and security of all da passengers?"

Jessie, all dolled up as Jack's girlfriend Sally, looked about at all the children surrounding the wagon waiting to get up on the hay. "Gee, I wasn't expecting this many little kids."

"Well we are da only hayride dis side a' Pallet," Meowth said as he climbed up between the lopsided 'Jack' and Jessie. "Da boss made sure a' dat!"

James looked down the path that was laid out. The entrance to the 'Trail of Terror' ride had been built so that the wagons needed to pass through a long dark tunnel. Now that the sun was going down, the opening only became more ominous. James started to shake, causing his enlarged foam head to bend oddly at the mouth.

"Are you SURE all the spooks are fake Jessie?" he quaked.

Jessie looked over at him and saw the twisted form of the head. She smacked it causing it to spin once. "What are you so worried about?" she barked as the mouth/face opening was facing towards her.

The foam head began to vibrate rapidly. "I'M SCARED!" James whined. That only got him his fake head's mouth shut as Jessie slammed down on him.

"Will's you's two just shut up?" Meowth chattered at them as he jumped on the back of the Tauros that was hitched up to the wagon. "Ya wanna ruin da 'surprise' for all da kids?" This got the children antsy.

A boy yelled "Hurry up! We wanna ride!"

This was followed by a girl adding "Yeah! When do we start?"

This finished with a crescendo of all the kids chanting "HAY-RIDE! HAY-RIDE! HAY-RIDE! HAY-RIDE!"

"Hey you two!" someone croaked. "What's that holdup! You were supposed to have left five minutes ago!"

"Hold your Rapidashes!" Jessie shouted back at Butch over on Wagon Two. At least she got the satisfaction of hearing one of his kids asking if he was making that voice up for the ride, and if he wasn't, why wasn't he in a frog's costume rather than a Prince?

"I kissed him kid," 'Princess' Cassidy was heard to bark. "Now shut up and sit down!"

"Wait until the boss hears he refused to wear the frog's head," Jessie giggled to herself as she and James climbed to the top of the haystack in their wagon and settled the brats down. "We'll start in a moment!" she announced. "Now, due to regulations…"

"…And da Fire Marshall," Meowth interjected from the back of the Tauros.

"…We ask you to please put your PokéBalls in these holding trays," she continued sweetly. "We wouldn't want you to lose them during the ride, now would we?"

James reached into the head's mouth to scratch his ear. "Umm, yes we would, wouldn't we, Jess?" he asked her. He found his arm being 'bit' by his foam head as Jessie slammed it shut again.

"NO you Imbecile!" she hissed and whispered. "We WOULDN'T…" She winked and nudged him to drive home her point.

"But what about our plan to steal…" he started. It then finally dawned on him. "Oh! Oh, no, I guess we wouldn't then."

"Isn't Jack the Pumpkin King just totally clueless?" Jessie added as a cover.

"You're telling me," the yellow haired kid yelled back. "What do you see in him 'Sally'?"

"Good question," Jessie mumbled and sighed. She and James continued to gather the orbs. They then placed them in a slot hidden in the top bail of hay behind their seat as they sat down.

"All right kiddies," Meowth yelled from the front, "let da TERROR BEGIN!"

"Yea, yea," spiky kid yawned. "Shut up and start already…"

James gave the leads a slight crack. The Tauros started to trundle down the dark path.

* * *

Station Two was out in the woods past the tunnel roughly a half mile, and a quarter mile from Station One. It was a single manned post, where an 'alien specter' was to float around the wagon without any visible means to support it, and have enough of a physical presence to scare the willies out of the kids. It was right up her alley.

She sighed to herself. 'How did I wind up in a tree on a chilly October night waiting to ambush a Team Rocket wagon?' she kept asking herself. "Oh well," she now said aloud as she checked her aura field she generated for that ghost-look they wanted, "I'll just make the best of it. Now I know the first one is Jessie and James, those dim bulbs… followed by Butch and Cassidy… swell…" From her vantage point she saw the movement of a small guide light on the side of Wagon One. She readied her 'attack' by fading out. It would probably be another half hour before they would arrive at her station.

_"__Muuuuu!__"_

Jessie suddenly found herself within a binding wrap of foam and fake boney arms as James grabbed her. Fortunately she also now had the reigns.

"W-What was that?" he stammered as Jessie began the process of unwinding her partner so that she didn't drive them into the ditch.

"It was probably nothing!" Jessie harped now hitting him to release her. "Now concentrate! We have to get ready for Station One!"

_"__Muuuuuuuuu!__"_

"Stop it Meowth!" she now hissed at the cat up front.

"Hey, dat wasn't me," he griped back.

"It wasn't… you?" James asked as he shivered.

"Jack funny!" he heard. He looked over his shoulder to find a little girl rider looking at him. "Jack funny!" she repeated. "Oh look!"

James only had a moment to glance before the dark night became totally black.

* * *

At Station One M2 sat waiting for the wagon to roll by. He looked grim with a long butcher's knife stuck through his body - really - the MewTwo had used his powers to psychically insert the knife into himself so that it protruded out his back in the most horrific way. And with some added ketchup for blood, and he looked the gory sight.

His mood was also gory.

"Why are we here?" he griped. Beside him squatted what looked like Professor North, but was actually a droid from the lab on Level Prime that had been blasted by a team from that Giovanni's personal hit squad, Terminal Solutions in the final Battle of the Sylph Company nearly a year prior. It had been designed to simulate the way a real human body would react to most situations, including getting blown apart by a sawed-off shotgun. It had a gaping hole in its chest and was covered in red goo. It had shocked the dickens out of Prime's Gio during the siege, so this was the perfect place to put it. It also gave North the perfect excuse for not being there – he was there… _he _just wasn't.

"WHY - ARE - WE - HERE!" M2 repeated himself.

"Lookout duty... The Golden R knows that this 'ride' is only to snitch PokéBalls off the riders," the droid said as it looked about with its infrared eyes.

"I'm not Team Rocket... I'm not REALLY Golden R!" M2 quibbled, as the sounds of the first wagon got closer.

"Oh come now! You can't tell me that you just love sticking that knife through yourself and spooking the humans out!" the droid said with a smirk.

M2 smiled. "It does have it's... pleasures... though this ketchup is attracting Pikachus..."

"Pika Pika!" a small electric rodent said from behind them. It had found the PokéCat's bottle and was enjoying itself.

The droid shook its head. "Giovanni should make that standard issue..."

_"Muuuuu!"_

M2 looked out from the shrubs they were behind. "What's that sound? There shouldn't be anyone between the start of the ride and here..."

_"Muuuuu!"_

The droid looked out as well. "My scanners hear it too, but I can not discern where it's coming from..."

"_MuuuuuUUUUUUU_VOOOP!"

That sound made both M2 and the droid jump out of the shrub. The Pikachu followed close behind as it enjoyed the ketchup.

"Oh goodie! Now what?"

M2 looked at the droid. "What?"

The robot adjusted its glasses. "The entire wagon is gone... vanished!"

M2 cocked his head. "That's some hayride!" he said as he removed the knife and spun it in his paws.

"Let's backtrack," the droid suggested, crunching across the dried leaves and tall grass back up the path the ride was supposed to have taken. M2 shook his head and followed. The Pikachu happily continued with its ketchup.

Then it vanished.

M2 felt the movement. He spun about just in time to see the bottle of ketchup fall to the ground.

"Droid, you'd better look at this… HURRY!" he barked.

The North-Bot looked back at where the MewTwo had stopped. "What?" it asked.

"That Pikachu that was behind us… it just vanished."

"Did you spook it?" the droid asked. M2 looked over at him with a look of 'I can't believe you just said that' on his face.

"No, it just vanished," he said. "Almost like a teleport move."

The North-Droid scratched its head as it started back. "Well, that's impossible, especially for a wild Pikachu. All it was doing was sitting right there…"

Then the droid vanished as well.

M2 crouched down in a defensive stance. His tail whipped about as he attempted to sense his surroundings. He remembered his Doorknob was still on, the device used to keep unwanted contact with other psychics and energy creatures. He gave it a twist to lower its output. As he did, a wall of black fell upon him.

* * *

Station Two was getting impatient. It was now over an hour behind schedule even for the first wagon to get there. She spied up the road and no longer saw any of the lanterns that would tell her where the wagons were."

"Those two bumbling idiots!" she grumbled. "Did they manage to drive everyone off a cliff or something?" She sighed and figured she had better check this out – after all, she was supposed to keep an eye on them as well.

She leapt down from the tree with surprising agility landing catlike on all fours. She padded down the path that lead back to the starting tunnel.

She neared Station One. She knew this one was supposed to have been manned by two members of Team Rocket's Golden R division – she snickered to herself as she remembered how that always sounded like they ran some sort of fast-food restaurant. She lifted herself off the ground and settled near the hideout the two were suppose to be in. She found it empty. She landed and felt something under her toe.

"Eww!" she said as she leapt up. "What was that?" She looked down and raised a small glow off herself to see. "Blood?" she asked as she touched it. "No, this is ketchup… maybe they _are _opening a fast-food joint!" She laughed to herself until she saw the tracks leading up towards the path. She took a step to follow.

_Muuuuuuuuuuuu!_

A wall of black slammed down on her. Her head spun with the feeling of being pulled down a drain. She felt her legs give out as she dropped down and held the ground that didn't seem stable enough to stand on any further.

When it stopped she opened her eyes to a sharply shaped shadow below herself. She spun around and looked skywards.

A bone white moon hung in the sharp night air, its surface contrasting with the black tree branches silhouette against it. Her head whirled. This wasn't… possible.

"What's going on here?" she said to herself. "I didn't teleport myself… and I don't think someone else could have gotten past my barriers… and what is with that full moon? There wasn't a full moon before…"

"And who are you?" suddenly reverberated within her mind. She turned sharply at the sound of the voice.

In the moonlight two MewTwo found themselves staring at one another. She was a slight bit smaller than the other one, and a touch more lavender in color than its gray.

"Who… who are you?" she thought.

"I asked first," M2 replied.

* * *

The hayride was now a roller coaster ride for the members of Team Rocket. It ended with a resounding thud.

Jessie and James lifted themselves up off the wagon driver's footrest where they landed.

"Where are we James?" Jessie squeaked from her position.

"Oh, this doesn't look right," he replied as he held the Jack head down over his own head for protection.

They looked around themselves. Instead of being in a forest, they were now in an empty field of tall grass. The moon was full and the stars were shining brightly, but they could not see anything around them. Jessie then examined their load.

"Where did all the little brats go?" she asked.

James spun about and yanked on the secret drawer behind them. "I don't know, and their PokéBalls aren't here either!"

Jessie pointed over the front of the wagon. "The Tauros is gone, as is Meowth! Oh James, what is going on!"

_"__Muuuuuuuuu!__"_

"There's that horrible sound again!" James yelped. "You hear it, right?"

Jessie answered by wrapping herself around James as he did the same. She grabbed his oversized costume head and covered both their heads with it.

A few seconds of deathly silence ran by. They chanced a peek out from the maul of Jack the Pumpkin King's foam mouth.

The moon light was extremely bright, but even with its glow, only the path seemed illuminated. But something was walking up it. They could see the silhouette there – slowly – pacing – dragging itself.

"Who's there?" James asked the figure.

"Murph…" was all they got back.

"Oh, it's Murphy!" James said in a relieved voice. "You know – Murphy from the shop we get our car tuned up?"

Jessie smacked him up the side of the head. Obviously that wasn't Murphy.

* * *

M2 examined the female MewTwo before him. "MewTwos are not supposed to be gender specific," he verbally said.

'Really?' the other said in his mind as she examined 'him'. 'You could have fooled me. Besides, I thought I was the only one here. I know that Giovanni attempted to make others, but I didn't expect to see another of us here tonight!'

M2 grimaced. 'Umm, not exactly,' he transmitted. He then saw her expression change from confusion and perturbed anger to one of wonder.

'I sense a difference in you…' she telecommunicated almost in awe. 'You're not of this dimension, are you?'

M2 smiled, and nodded his head. 'No, I am not.'. PBM took a step towards him, but he put a paw up.

"Wait a moment," he said aloud which caught her by surprise – she rarely used her own voice. She watched him reach for a chain around his neck. When he turned it about, she saw a small device hanging from it.

"What is that?" she asked trying out her own vocal cords for once. She saw him look up and smile.

M2 twisted the round top of the device. "It's called a Doorknob. It projects a protective field around myself."

She looked slightly offended by the though that this MewTwo needed protection, and he felt it too, briefly. Suddenly, she no longer felt his mind at all.

"You've… shut me out…" she said a bit startled.

M2 nodded. "For our mutual protection I had to. I have been near other MewTwos and Mews before. Being close to each other tends to short us out. And right now, this current situation is enough of a headache..." M2 flipped the knife he had been using as a prop. "Well, this is different..."

"How so?" she asked.

"I for one usually do not teleport so easily, without my consent, of course..."

"I could say the same," she agreed. She then looked at the MewTwo. "Unless you were the one who transmatted me."

M2 plunked his fisted paws into his hips. "My dear, as of a few minutes ago I did not even know you existed!"

_"Muuuuuu!"_

The MewTwos looked about themselves.

"What was that?" she asked.

M2 glared at the sky. "It's the same sound the droid and I heard when this all started..."

She looked back at him. "Droid?"

"Me..." came a voice from nearby.

The MewTwos walked over a slight roll in the field, and found a pair of legs sticking out of a hole.

"Ah, I see you found my legs! Good!" the voice said from off to the left. M2 looked down into the base of the depression, and saw the rest of the droid. It had been sliced cleanly along its waist.

"Peachy," M2 scoffed as the other MewTwo came over to look at the body.

"Oh my!" North-Droid exclaimed. "You found PBM!"

"PB-what?" M2 asked.

"Professor North?" she asked.

The droid managed to touch its chest. "A reasonable facsimile my dear," it replied. "How are you child?"

"PB-what?" M2 asked again. The droid scowled at him.

"Oh very well," it grumbled. "PBM, this is M2. M2, this is PBM, one of the MewTwos of this level."

"One of!" she asked.

"You have a name?" M2 cut in as he plucked the legs out of the scrub bush they were sticking out of and took them down to the torso.

"Well?" she asked a bit confused and miffed as well. "It sounds like you have one as well."

"Mine was out of necessity because there was more than one MewTwo where I was at the time." He looked at the female MewTwo and shook his head. "PBM?" he asked.

"M2" she shot back.

He tapped his chest with the knife bearing paw then held two digits up with the other.

"Knifey victory?" she asked by the gesture.

M2 got an angry look and repeated his little dance. "Mew – 2" he added for verbal affect. "So what does P B M stand for?"

She spun about. "Ummm… welll… ummm…"

"What's that?" M2 mocked. "What's that? I can't hear you!"

"Peanut Butter…" she mumbled.

M2 stood still for a moment then looked down at the droid in the grass.

"She was named by the daughter of the scientist who created her," the droid answered.

"Peanut Butter… MewTwo," M2 filled it out. "Shouldn't that make her PBM2?"

"Umm, no," the Droid said as it started tinkering with some connections and wires in the legs section.

M2 shook his head at the mess at his feet. "So how did you get in THIS condition droid?" he asked.

"How?" it replied loudly. "What do you mean how? YOU did this to me!"

M2 stepped back, surprised by the accusation. "Me? Why would I have a reason to slice you in half?"

"Well you tell me!" the automaton said as it flipped its legs over so they weren't upside down. "I thought it was odd as well."

"I can tell you, it wasn't me droid..." M2 said with much conviction.

The droid cocked its head, showing some further damage it has sustained - probably from the tumble it took coming down the hill. "You are noted as one who never lies..." it said as it reset a few finger joints in its right hand.

M2 looked at the knife and examined it. "See? Clean as a whistle. Without a trace..."

"Look at that!" PBM said, looking closely at the knife blade. Streaks of crimson started to roll down it, appearing from out of nowhere.

"Now, it's getting gross," M2 said, as he watched it trickle down his hand.

The droid waved M2 closer. "Let me scan it," it said, as it adjust its glasses. "Well, it's not mech-fluid... not even any residual trace... its blood all right..."

M2 glared at the blade. "What type?"

"Cross referencing..." the droid said, looking hard at the goo.

"It's not human... It's Pokémon... Rodent... Pikachu..."

M2 threw the knife down and looked about the terrain, a look of worry on his face. The expression caught PBM by surprise.

"What?" she asked. "What is it?"

M2 kept looking about in the darkness. "We were with a Pikachu before we were swept up in this…" he told her as he continued to sweep with his senses.

_"Muuuuuu!" _the sound came again. But this time, it was followed by evil laughter. M2 felt a cold wave run through his soul. He pointed skywards and shot an orb of energy off as a flare.

Nearby at Wagon One, Jessie and James still couldn't figure who the figure was that was approaching them. But as the flare fired off, hope rose with it.

"L-look! There's someone else here in this field with us!" Jessie said, still shivering, but with a slight sound of relief.

James was looking the other way at the approaching figure. "Look!" he said. "It's Meowth!"

It turned slowly and looked back at them. The sight caused both Rockets to tumble back towards the wagon.

The field had been illuminated by the flair. Now they could see that this grassland seemed to stretch for miles in all directions, save for a line of trees behind the path the wagon had come down. What got M2 and PBM's attention though was high above the horizon. There was a pair of menacing red eyes glaring down on them.

"Ha ha ha... nice try..." the eyes said. Then a gust of wind sniffed out the energy orb like a candle.

"Well," the droid said, almost in a happy tone, "we're in it now, aren't we?" As they returned to darkness, the two MewTwos watched as it started to re-assemble itself.

Jessie and James were almost just as happy the flare blew out, for while it glowed, they could see the figure that looked like Meowth get closer, and it was a sight. Its fur was a tatter, its forehead charm broken, a ragged ear flopped along its head, and the expression on its face was that...

...of a zombie...

_"Muuuuuuuu!"_the sound made again, but not from the Meowth.

PBM blinked in the darkness. She held her hand over her eyes. A soft lavender glow illuminated around her.

Up on the path, the Meowth stopped its advance on the wagon and turned towards the new source of light out in the field. There it came upon the shimmering form of PBM. The Meowth stopped moving and stared. At first she thought it was looking at her, but then she realized it was looking past her.

"Okay, um, M2 is it?" she nervously asked her fellow MewTwo. "There is something behind me. Whatever it is it's nastier than a zombie Meowth, right?"

M2 chanced a quick glance. Whatever it was, it certainly WAS nastier _looking _than any zombie Meowth.

It was an unmoving mass. Shades of crimson so dark it was almost black seemed to move across its skin - Almost as if the markings themselves were alive. PBM's huge purple eyes grew larger as she began muttering something under her breath, almost like a chant. M2 leaned closer trying to hear what she was saying as he defended her rear. He wondered if it was some sort of a spell or some special Level 1.1 incantation…

He heard "There's-no-place-like-home-There's-no-place-like-home-There's-no-place-like…"

"Click your heels Dorothy," he murmured to her. "It's not moving any closer towards us!"

They looked beside them and saw the droid dragging itself forward. It reached the red-black mass and poked at it while scanning. "Well, whatever this was, something killed it."

PBM and M2 stared at it. "That big thing is DEAD?" PBM asked with a look of near sickness all over her face. "Ugh! Something really NASTY must've gotten to it!"

The North-Droid nodded as it returned to attaching its spine to its lower section. "Agreed – from its size and shape, I would say it once was a Tauros, or some other large Pokémon type."

Opposite it, the Meowth mewed sympathetically. It waved one paw in the air. Taking a gulp, PBM stepped forward and inspected it. Tiny red swirls where moving up it slowly. The Zombie Meowth mewed sadly again.

"It's... It's... it seems to be killing the Meowth slowly," she said. "No… wait… It's not killing it… It's the only thing keeping the Meowth alive… Something has made it a zombie… and its fighting back."

The ragged Meowth nodded slowly. "Nyaaaa..." it murmured halfheartedly. Then it collapsed into her arms.

The voice echoed again across the barren field. Taunting, drawing the unsuspecting pawns closer.

_"!"_

Over by the now empty wagon, whatever had made that eerie call caused Jessie and James to nearly asphyxiate each other, which only managed to twist and distort the foam Jack head more. Finally as she was beginning to turn blue Jessie managed to shove James away enough to look around.

"James, where did that Zombie Meowth go?" she asked.

"I don't know and I don't want to find out!" he moaned.

"We have to find it," she announced as she stood up and looked about. "Look there are some tracks."

"Wait a minute Jessie!" James bellowed. "Give me two good reasons why we should go after a ZOMBIE Meowth!"

Jessie tapped her chin. "Well, the first good reason would be that if that was our Meowth, we can help him – he'd owe us big time! The second would be that if it wasn't our Meowth, we could always capture it and give it to the boss as a new Pokémon type!"

James sighed as he removed the headgear to his costume and plunked it on the wagon's footboard. "I don't think Zombie is a proper evolution for a Meowth," he said as he followed his partner into the weeds in the direction the creature had gone.

It only took a few rises in the grass to find the Meowth, and all the others it had wandered into.

"Jessie, what are those?" James asked of the two psy-cats. M2 blinked at him. He then rolled his eyes skywards, allowing them to fall on his neighboring Pokémon.

"Did you blank out their memories of us?" he asked PBM.

She coughed. "It must have been one of my fellow MewTwo," she coyly remarked to him. "You know - the one's you just _informed_ me about?"

"Great…" he grumbled as he prepared to release their minds. "Allow me…"

But before anyone could do anything they heard the ghostly voice again calling, _"__Muuuuumaaaa!__"_

Jessie glared at PBM. The fact that she was about to talk to a droid and two genetic experiments didn't seem to faze her much.

"You seem to be holding my Zombie Meowth," she said at last.

"Yours? Oh, I see," PBM replied. "You can have him back if you'd like." She lifted the Meowth to hand it to the lady Rocket, but it began to hissed madly and clawed its way back up the MewTwo's arm. "OW! Meowth!" she cried.

Jessie looked hurt. "Meowth! Come here!"

The cat hissed again, its red eyes glinting sharply in the contrasting purple light.

"What? Why?" PBM translated the hissing for the others. "That's not Jessie!" she yelped in alarm as she leapt back.

James looked at the red braided hair blocking his vision "What? Of course that's Jessie," he scoffed. "She might look a little different in makeup, but that's just her costu…"

He wasn't laughing however when the Non-Jessie turned to smile at him with glinting fangs protruding from her ruby mouth. And now the stitches that had been drawn on her for the Sally costume were _real_ heavy thread with their ends dangling and swaying as she lumbered towards him.

James screamed "That's NOT Jessie! Not even on a BAD day is that Jessie!"

The Meowth hissed as it bared its claws and raised its fur on end. PBM felt the fur along her spine rise too. Before she quite realized what she was doing, she had crouched on all fours and was spitting like an angry alley cat!

"Well, that's different," M2 commented a bit bemused by her actions.

"…What? …What am I doing?" she asked herself as she sat back up and shook her head. "Why on earth did I do that? I've NEVER done that before!" She then felt the droid tap her.

"I think we have a more pressing matter at the moment," it said as it pointed over towards the bi-fanged Jessie as she moved towards the terrified James with an unrelenting motion. Her smile was unwavering as James sobbed in fear.

PBM knitted her brow and concentrated on the Rocket. James was unceremoniously teleported out of the way and dropped into a heap near the droid. M2, seeing an opening, concentrated on taking control of the fake Jessie as her movement ceased, and a soft glow surrounded her.

"Well now, what do I do with her?" he asked those present.

PBM was too busy trying to pull a hissing Meowth off her head to answer him. Finally the North-Droid had repaired itself enough to yank up its pants and stand up. It stepped beside M2 and examined the cursing and angry doppelganger he held.

"I would suggest that our next move would be trying to find the REAL Jessie," it suggested as it continued to reconnect components now that it was upright.

The Pseudo-Jessie opened her mouth wide and spat venom, which splattered over the droid's lab coat, sizzling.

"How rude!" the droid said, pouring a small amount of mech-fluid over the acid. "I just fixed that!"

M2 instantly snapped an energy orb around the apparition and launched it twenty feet over their heads. It hissed and cursed at them, but to no avail.

James was having a hard time taking all this in, until he looked at the droid again. "Wait a minute! I know you... aren't you that scientist who gives us all that neat special stuff when we're out on the road?"

"And then you go and trash it," the droid shot back at him. "How many times have you and Jessie crunched that Magikarp Sub Professor North gave you?"

James caught the inference in the droid's sentence. "Professor North?" Then he saw the dangling servos and components from the droid's mid section in the moon light. "You're not North!"

"Correct, I'm North," a voice said coming over the rise of the hill. Everyone looked up to see the scientist trudging through the grass.

"Rob! Rob?" M2 called out in surprise. "What are YOU doing here? I thought you were off on vacation…"

"I was," he said, looking around. "There I was at fifty-thousand feet in my flight to England, when I suddenly fell out of my seat, and landed in this field back there." He looked down at the upright mess at the bottom of the depression.

"Droid, what happen to you?" he asked.

"Selective slicing and dicing," it responded while resetting its leg. The foot twitched - That was good. The knee sparked - That was bad. "Shall I contact the base and activate the second droid?"

North looked around them. "Are you telling me you can contact the base?" he asked it.

The droid thought about it. It then stuck its finger in its mouth for a moment then held it over its head. "No sir, I'm sorry, but I can not," it replied having failed.

"Then no," North told it. He then looked up at the orb above them. "What's with Jessie?"

"That's not Jessie," M2 said, watching the orb as the creature inside scratched and clawed at the sides.

James climbed up the hill and grabbed the scientist by the lapels of his jacket. "Professor North, you've got to help us!" he bellowed. "You got to help me! Where's Jessie? Where's my Jessie!"

North looked at the orb. "Why don't we ask her?" he suggested towards the demon within the sphere.

M2 grinned at the suggestion. A MewTwo may sometime smile - Even that's enough to send chills up a spine… But a MewTwo that grins… James still didn't know what this creature was, but when he saw this he froze in fear.

M2 looked at his orb and brought it down to about five feet off the ground. He then made a hand gesture, and the sphere started to spin. The creature inside yelled and hollered an evil sounding wail of a banshee as it went round and round.

But then the sounds changed. It sounded less and less like a demon, and more like... Jessie!

"JaAaAaAaAaMsE! StOp ThIiIiIiIiS CrAaAaAaAaZy ThIiIiIiNg!" she screamed.

North pulled out a scanning rod from his jacket and waved it over the orb. "That's Jessie all right!" he announced as he read the readout.

M2 looked at the scientist with some shock and slowed the orb. When it stopped, he released the contents to the ground softly.

"No more for me Mommy... I just ate..." Jessie gurgled as she collapsed into James' arms.

M2 looked back at North. "This is strange... First this place made it look as if I had sliced the droid in half, then it had Pikachu blood run from that knife. Now, it attempts to make us destroy Jessie…"

"Yes, very selective, don't you agree?" the scientist noted.

"Hey, while you have that out, you might want to check that out over there," M2 said as he pointed over near the droid at the undulating mass on the ground. "Well now that's strange as well…"

The droid looked beside itself and exclaimed, "Oh my! It shrunk!"

"Yuck…" North said as he bent down next to throbbing blob. "I take it that this was larger?"

M2 held his paws over his head. "Much larger," he showed with his arms.

North glanced over at his droid. "Couldn't you get a reading on this?" he asked it.

"It was hard to read… I thought it might have been a Tauros at first..." it replied. "But there was too much dextrose..."

"Dextrose?" North asked as he waved the wand over the glob. "Well, this is odd..."

"Like everything else here," PBM said as she was still trying to get the zombie Meowth off her head.

"What are your readings, Rob?" M2 asked.

"Well..." he said, looking at the small ball in the palm of his hand that the rod fed into, "at one point it read as a large blob of strawberry Jell-O® with ketchup poured over it. But now it's showing as the remains of a Pikachu..."

"The Pikachu!" M2 said, bending down next to the mass.

"You've done this to us... You've done this to us..." a voice said from behind M2 and North. They looked at each other then back at PBM.

She was looking up at the Meowth on her head.

"You've done this to us... and you will pay!" the Meowth said.

"You've looked better there Meowth!" North said as he waved the scanner at him. "Hey Peanut!" he added towards the MewTwo under the chatty cat. "Long time no see!"

"Umm... Hi!" she said while keeping her eyes on the possessed creature on her head. She gave a little wave as well.

"You know her?" M2 whispered into the scientist's ear as he stepped away to examine his readings.

He looked back at her as she adjusted one of Meowth's feet that as it was nearly poking her in the left eye. "She's a local. I've run into her once or twice since we arrived."

"And you were going to mention about her to me when?" M2 asked him.

"Down boy," North grunted. "Looking at what we're in, you'll have plenty of time to get acquainted."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," M2 growled.

North looked back. Now the Meowth was drooling on her forehead, and she was attempting to get it to either raise its head, or close its mouth.

"Yes, nothing but professionalism. Indeed." He stepped back over to her side to make some more readings. A jet of steam shot out of M2's nose as he followed.

"Muuuuuuuuu!" the haunted voice cried from the field. North looked about.

Then the Jell-O® burst beside them splattering everything around.

"Oh, thank you!" the droid complained as it removed a large blob from its face. It looked back, as did North and M2, and saw the skeleton of a Pikachu.

"Pika," it said, its voice echoing over the field.

"Swell," the droid said catching the creature's attention. Then the skeletal Pikachu jumped up and spun around, severing the robot's head with its bony tail cartilage.

"Oh that's gonna take longer to fix!" the droid said as its body shut down in sparks.

"Pika PIKA!" the bones said.

"Well, you don't have to say it like that!" North said, quickly getting up.

"You - you understood it!" James yelped.

North looked back at the Rocket and nodded. "Yes, I can understand PokéSpeach… trust me, it's a long story… which I'll tell you later…*2"

"PIIIIIIKAAAAACHUUUUUU!" the bundle of bone shrieked as it fired off a surprisingly large Thundershock.

M2 shielded everyone the best he could as the lightning lit up the field. But surprisingly, the energy had penetrated his shield partly. He found himself being tossed to PBM's feet. She looked down at the heap.

"Pretty... eyes..." he said, before passing out.

"The MewTwo's down! The MewTwo's down!" the zombie on her head called. "Now for the other one!"

"Oh, of all the times to be without my lab jacket," North grumbled as he searched his pockets for anything. Other than the scanning rod and his airline tickets, he found his communicator, which he knew would not work. He even tried the little button marked 'Emergency Transmat' and smirked at the lack of response.

"PIIIIIKAAAAACHUUUUUU!" the enraged skeleton screamed.

"HAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" the evil eyes said, appearing overhead again.

_**The Roll Play Rolls on…**_

*1 - Set in 10Pt Courier font  
*2 - See **Branded** - Chapter Eleven of _The __Lugia __Chronicles_ here on FFN.

Remastered 1110.25


	2. Team Rocket's Halloween Vacation

.

**A F T E R ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**

**T h e ¤ R P G / S**

Based on the FanFic series

**T H E ¤ L U G I A ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**

By Anne Ruecroft & R. A. Stott

and

The RPG

**'TEAM ****ROCKET'S ****HAUNTED ****HAYRIDE'**

Compiled, edited and rewritten by R. A. Stott

Contributing Authors for this chapter -

ArkNorth, PeanutButterMewTwo, Baby Jigglypuff and Charm

* * *

**Chapter Two**

**TEAM ROCKET'S HALLOWEEN VACATION**

"PIIIIIIKAAAAACHUUUUUU!" the bundle of bone shrieked as it fired off a surprisingly large Thundershock.

M2 shielded everyone the best he could as the lightning lit up the field. But, he was surprised to find the energy had partly penetrated his psychic shield. He found himself being tossed to PBM's feet. She looked down at the heap.

"Pretty... eyes..." he said before passing out.

"The MewTwo's down! The MewTwo's down!" the zombie on her head called. "Now for the other one!"

The possessed Meowth's words rattled through her head and made her temples throb.

"The OTHER one isn't going to let you do this, alley cat!" she yelled at the psycho zombie attached to her head. "So go tell your boss to stuff it in his ears!" She swatted and batted at the bedeviled cat perched on her cranium as it did everything it could to remain up there. She glanced down at M2, then up at the eyes that were glaring down from the sky. Her blood boiled.

"NO ONE..." she bellowed, "and I mean NO ONE does that to a fellow MewTwo!"

"Oh, this just went from bad to a whole bunch more bad," the android's head squeaked as it looked for a way to roll out of the way of the oncoming storm.

PBM charged a large ball of black energy between her paws. Lavender sparks shot violently about. The fighting stopped momentarily as the skeletal Pikachu sat down to watch.

"Take THIS!" she screamed as she hurled the ball of psychic rage rather like a baseball pitcher! The Meowth was tossed to the ground, the Pikachu hissed violently. The red eyes vanished. Thunder rumbled across the sky, and further down the empty field, dark purple strobe lightning danced on the shadows.

PBM wavered for a moment. "Annnd there's morrre where THAT came... ff.. from!" she called out to the black sky as her eyes crossed and uncrossed. Then she too fell to the ground with an unceremonious thud.

"Damn!" North grumbled as he quickly moved to PBM's side and gave her a quick scan and pulse check. He sat back on his haunches and wiped his brow. "She's okay," he panted. "She just exhausted herself."

"Yea? Well what about us? I want my MOMMY!" Jessie loudly sobbed, which caught everyone who was still awake by surprise. Jessie normally was not one to show a lot of frightened emotion, and her blurt sounded more like it should have come from James.

James was busy hyperventilating. Of course that was probably the reason why it had been left to Jessie to state the obvious.

The zombie Meowth crawled to its feet. It stumbled over to the side of the unconscious MewTwos and sat down. The red streaks on its paw were darker now.

"You..." it said staring blankly at no one in particular, "you did this to us. You spoiled us. You ruined us. Now we are not what we are meant to be. You spoiled the picture!"

It then howled, its red rimmed rheumy eyes spilling over. The skeletal Pikachu joined it in its rant, their voices becoming higher and higher, in a joined cry of both "Pika! Pikachu!" and "Nyaaaa! nya nyaaaaaaa!" until they silently stared at North, as if waiting for an answer.

"Don't look at me guys," the scientist stated while holding his scanning rod out at them, "because I have no idea what you're on about... but I'm getting a feeling I'm about to."

The wind began to whistle as all they now heard was the chirp of the device.

Her eyelids fluttered. Her bleary vision started to return as she could see that she was on the ground, the Meowth that had clung hard to her was beside her had turned to face the man that M2 seemed to know. Its back was to her.

She stabbed out with her sore paw and grabbed it by the scruff of its neck. As she lifted off the ground, she swung it high over her head. Her energy surged back, much to the surprise of the scientist.

"Amazingly short recovery time," he wondered as he watched her levitate. "M2 could learn a thing or two from this one!"

PBM wasn't in the mood for an explanation of North's mumblings. She glared at her snagged zombie and flashed her eyes at it. "What did you do!" she demanded. "What did you do!" She shook it harder each time she yelled at it. The cat cowered. In its eyes was regret.

"Don't be mad at me," it said in a small voice. "Not you... If you get mad it won't get better." PBM stared at the cat she held then at North.

He shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine," he stated. "This furball isn't making much sense."

She returned her glare to the cat she had at arm's length. "What has this to do with me?" she asked it.

The cat curled up a bit. "Muuma!" it said. "Muuma will listen to you! She'll do what you tell her! You can talk to her while the others can't!"

"We'll see about that," North smirked as he wrapped up his extension line from his scanning rod's reader box and pocketed it.

"Only the Lady," it reaffirmed. It then closed its eyes and said no more.

PBM looked at the limp body she now had dangling and gave it a little shake. "Ew... do you think its dead?"

North looked at the Meowth and scrutinized it closely without touching it like the MewTwo was. "You're a braver lady than I," he told her. "I certainly wouldn't be holding it like that without gloves on, and don't tell me that you've got a shield between yourself and it, because I know you don't!" He waved his wand at her. "Please be more careful when picking infected things up in the future, ea? You never know where it's been!" He gave it a quick scan then stuck a pinkly in where a skinny little neck met up with the creature's big head.

"Interesting..." he said. "From what I can tell, Meowth will be fine, though I find it interesting that he speaks better as a zombie than he does when he's not possessed."

"This _is_ our Meowth, Professor North?" Jessie asked.

"Oh, quite definitely," he said as he looked at his finger he had been taking the cat's pulse with and sniffed it. "The DNA scan matches. And whatever it is on his skin and fur is only camouflage... it's not even real... just a surface illusion."

PBM looked at the limp cat. "Strange... What do you think he meant about Muuma? Just what _is_ a Muuma?"

North pulled out a PDA/PokéDex and tapped it with a stylus. "Actually its a Misdreavus... Muuma is a name given it by the Japanese... it's a ghost-type, much like a Will-o-wisp... they tend to live in caves and dark places though, and they feed on fear."

"What does it want with us?" Jessie asked with a bit of fright in her voice as she grabbed North's jacket and began to shake him.

"Do you think it brought us here?" James added as he joined Jessie on North's other side to rock his world.

"MuuuuuuUUUuuuuuu!" they heard which stopped Team Rocket from the quake they were putting the scientist through. He managed to detach himself from their grasp and stepped forwards to look up into the black sky.

"I guess we're about to find out, aren't we?" he said as he waved the scanner about. He stopped at a point over Jessie's head roughly six feet up. There a wavy image of the small specter materialized.

"OH!" she yelped and ducked down. Then she blinked and looked up. "Is... is that it? Is that all we were supposed to be scared about?"

"MuuuuuuUUUU!" it said.

"Moo to you too!" Jessie yelled as she stood up and shook her fist at the rather small PokéSpirit.

"It _is_ kind of little, even for a Misdreavus," North noted. "But its power level doesn't add up right... it's too strong for its size, especially to be a conduit to all this."

"Man! That thing is uuuuuuuuuuugly!" commented PBM. It hissed at her.

"Did you understand it any?" North asked her. "Remember, the possessed Meowth said you'd understand it."

Peanut shrugged. "So far it's hissed at me and said 'Muu' - stimulating conversation, I must say!"

"W-where is the rest of it?" James sobbed. "It has no body!"

North shook his head. "It's a ghost! Where does it say a ghost has to have a body?"

"Yea, just look at me!" the head of the android said. "My body is over there and I'm over here! Do you see me complaining?"

The Misdreavus looked as if it were sizing up those below it. It nodded towards the skeletal Pikachu. They both started to approach the gathered.

M2 snapped upright, much to everyone's surprise, and slapped energy orbs around both of the attacking creatures. He fell back onto his elbows panting and grunting.

"A-Are you okay?" PBM asked seeing the angry look on M2's face.

He looked up at her and winked. He then returned his attention back to the orbs. Inside them, their contents were howling and spitting, and striking the spherical walls of their prisons.

"Careful," North warned, "the Pikachu is about to..."

"CHUUUUUUUU!" it cried, illuminating its orb with electricity like a light bulb. Then it collapsed into a pile of bones. It slowly reformed itself. M2 stood up and dusted himself off. He then tapped on the clear ball causing the Pikachu to fire off only to collapse into its parts again.

"You can't see it, but I've made the inside of my orbs reflective to energy," M2 smiled and tapped it again. "Interesting..."

"Trouble?" North asked then raised a hand to Jessie and James when he realized what he had just said. "And please, no mottoes right now... I'm already preparing for trouble..."

"You don't want to make it double?" James meekly asked

"NO MOTTOES!" North barked. "What's the problem M2?"

"This is not what I expected," the MewTwo said as he moved towards the ghost's ball. "A Misdreavus is a spook. It's good for a scare, but not exactly what we're experiencing here..."

"Scare?" Jessie asked, now nearly recovered from her own experience.

"I'm scared enough for the GROUP of us!" James said, clutching Jessie. She rolled her eyes and decked him.

"Not that I'm challenging your friend, Professor" Jessie asked as she slipped her boot out of the twitching form of James' grasp, "but wouldn't a ghost of any kind be enough to cause this?"

"No, M2's right, there are some limiting factors still here..." North said, scratching his chin with his useless communicator. "What do you think...? Yamikarasu?"

M2 nodded. PBM cocked her head as just the sound of that name was enough to make her spine shiver.

"Yamikarasu... The Murkrow..." he explained to her, "...the stealer of souls, and the bane of travelers."

North shook his head. "Fits the bill - Lead them astray… get them lost… steal their souls…"

"Murkrow! Murkrow! You will all be fodder for the Murkrow," the Misdreavus said from its sphere.

M2 looked at PBM. "Wasn't it only supposed to be you who understood that thing?" he whispered to her.

"Hey, I'm just here for the ride," she shrugged. She was still holding the Zombie Meowth by the scruff of its neck... or was she?

"Hey! Wha... what am I doin' here? I was wit' Jessie and James an' dat stupid wagon 'ting!"

PBM raised the cat Pokémon and looked at him. Sure enough, it was Meowth, looking his regular self.

"Hey, pretty lady! What gives?" he said, a sweat drop falling from his restored face.

"Meowth? What?" PBM asked startled by the sight of Team Rocket's chatty cat.

M2 looked at the cat as well then returned his stare to the Misdreavus. "What about the Murkrow, specter?"

North looked at the larger MewTwo. "All it did was howl... you understood it?"

M2 shot North a look. "You didn't understand it? That's supposed to be impossible!"

"I agree... when I was permitted the powers of understanding Pokémon, no one ever said there would be limitations..." North examined the Misdreavus closely.

"Muuma - She'll listen to you... She'll do what you tell her! You can talk to her while the others can't!" PBM quoted to herself, while putting Meowth down.

"Who said dat load of garbage?" the snide cat quipped.

M2 laughed. "You did, while under the Misdreavus' control."

"I must'a been out'a my head," he grumbled. "Oh yea, I was…"

PBM snapped M2 a shocked look. "You were awake all along?"

M2 shook his head. "Only partly... I was actually shocked back by the lightning temporarily shutting my Doorknob down," he told her while tapping the psychic-blocking device that dangled around his neck. He then looked back at her with a slightly curious look on his face. "I'm surprised that the same zap didn't affect you as well..."

"What do you mean?" she asked. M2 reached for the pendant he wore and shut it off. He then looked at his paw and offered it to her. PBM looked at it as he shook it for her to take it. She tentatively touched his paw, then they clasped. She was a bit surprised when he did not let go.

M2 looked at the paw in his paw… then at its owner… then at the scientist.

"North? Take a look at this..." he said.

North glanced back at the pair and instinctively ducked down. He peeked between his fingers he had shielded his face with. With an expression of shock, then fear and finally curiosity, he stood back up and looked a bit harder at the pair. Seeing nothing happening, he dropped his hands and stepped closer.

"Umm, excuse me, but why are you two acting like a bomb should be going off?" Peanut complained as she started to get a bit miffed at the two of them. Her palm was getting hot as well...

"Hang on for a moment," the scientist told her. "Is your Doorknob off?" he then asked M2.

The MewTwo nodded a yes.

"So? Dey look like a cute couple!" Meowth quipped as he went over to Jessie and James' side.

North smiled at the comment then took a serious look as he examined the pair. "That's not the point here, Meowth. M2 is not from this dimension. And the last time he encountered another MewTwo, they nearly blew each other up, and put a sizable hole into the side of Lavender Tower! He shouldn't be able to touch her… with or without the Doorknob being on or not."

"Umm... what's that mean?" PBM asked now a bit uneasy at the paw holding her own paw.

"It means one of two things..." North said as he walked around them examining the clutched paws. "Either, M2 has found a MewTwo he can actually touch... compatible with, so to say... _Or_, we're really not here and this is a fraud…"

PBM looked around herself. "What... this is an illusion?" she asked.

James touched the ground, grabbed some grass, and yanked it out of the dirt. "It feels like we're here..."

North shook his head. "It doesn't matter. With proper manipulation, you can feel like you're here, when you're really somewhere else... I could still be on my plane, you could still be on that wagon... you name it."

"Dis is bad... really bad..." Meowth mumbled.

"Tell me about it," Jessie said as she shook her head trying to get out the cobwebs from being freed from her own possession.

"Don't worry Jessie. We'll get out of this... we always do..." James reassured her.

The professor snorted. "This is a bit more than just a problem Pokémon, I'm afraid."

M2 stepped over to the Misdreavus. "What does the Murkrow want with us?"

The Misdreavus looked through the sphere at the MewTwo. "Murkrow wants souls... Souls for its master..."

M2 looked at North with a look of dread on his face. "Murkrow wants souls for its master," he translated for him. "We've heard that before, haven't we?"

"But not yours..." the Misdreavus added.

M2 looked back at the spirit. "What do you mean by that?"

It spun about in its sphere. "Others... there are others... you were not supposed to be here... others in danger..." it said, its red eyes locking on M2.

M2 grumbled. "It says that my soul wasn't supposed to be taken because I wasn't supposed to be here..."

North nodded. "That makes sense, since you and I are down from the Prime," he quietly mentioned to the MewTwo.

"But what did it mean that the 'others' are in danger?" PBM asked. "What others?"

"Others?" James asked. He looked up the rise at the wagon that was sitting in the dark back on the path. "Oh no!"

"The CHILDREN!" Jessie yelped.

North slapped his forehead. "Damn! How many were on your wagon?"

"We had a'full load," Meowth seemed proud to announce. "Twenty Five head o'brats! And dey all had at least two or three PokéBalls each! WOTTA HAUL!"

It suddenly got very quiet around Meowth. He noticed that everyone including the Misdreavus and the boney Pikachu were staring at him.

"Oh, dat's right," he mumbled as he drew a circle in the dirt with his toe. "Dat's not good news right now, is it?"

"What's not good news? Where are we?" a voice croaked behind them.

The group turned. Standing behind them on the top of the hill was another pair of familiar faces.

"Butch! Cassidy! What are YOU doing here?" Jessie snarled at their rivals.

"Weren't you two driving Wagon Two?" James asked, quieting his partner's growling.

"We were..." Cassidy said, holding her head. She looked dizzy, and started to fall down the hill. Peanut shot a cushion of energy beneath her allowing her to slide down safely. PBM bent down to examine the Rocket at her feet and saw she was bleeding from the forehead with trickles of blood splattering across her princess gown she was wearing for their hayride.

On top of the rise stood Butch in his prince costume. He acted uncaring about the condition of his partner. He grinned with an evil look in his eyes.

"Uh oh..." Meowth nervously said. "Looks like we've got anoth'a possession heres!"

"You mean, just because he's turning his head COMPLETELY around?" James asked taking a few steps back while dragging Jessie in front of himself.

"BWAHAHAHAHA!" Butch pulled a long flat-edged sword that was part of his costume from its hilt and swiped it about in the air.

"Okay, that was kind of cliché ..." North grumbled as he took his readings while kneeling beside the wounded Rocket.

Peanut stared at Butch. He looked like an escapee from a cheap horror flick. Cassidy was staring up at him with an expression of horror and seemed to be trying to form words. Butch was simply standing at the top of the rise laughing malevolently. PBM's mind raced. Muuma... Misdreavus was in control here. "You can speak to her." she whispered.

"You know, this should not be happening," M2 barked as he attempted to subdue the out-of-control Prince-dressed Rocket. "The Misdreavus is contained!"

"Just means there's either more than one, or we really aren't here!" North called out as he avoided some of Butch's slashing with the sword while covering over Cassidy.

"Misdreavus!" PBM yelled in what she hoped was a commanding voice. "Release the human! He's worth nothing to you. Let him go!"

The phantom laughed, which was a disturbing sight indeed.

"Ooh, so the little one is back!" it taunted. "We thought we lost you a long time ago!"

The rebuttal had caught her by surprise. "What?" PBM asked confused.

"You're with them!" yelped James as he pointed an accusing finger at her. That earned him a slap up the side of the head from Jessie when North gestured her to do so.

"No! I'm not! I've NEVER seen this thing before!" she cried waving her paws about.

The Misdreavus floated its containment sphere closer to her - close enough to laugh in her face. A scent of death came with that laugh. "I think you ha-ave!" it sneered at her. "Oh, maybe you forgot that, dearie! Maybe you think it was just a baaaad dream!"

PBM shook her head. M2 gave her a poke as he paused in his chase after the rogue Butch. "Don't listen to it... It's just trying to mess with your mind," he whispered to her.

She nodded. Her nerves were fraying. "Misdreavus!" she cried again. "You lie. You try to prey on the helpless! You will find I am no kitten at your mercy. Now let the man _GO!_"

Misdreavus cackled. "But you were ooo-once," it said in a singsong voice and flipped a few times. "Once you couldn't defeat me!"

"What are you blathering about?" spat the smaller MewTwo. "You never had me here!"

M2 finally managed to disarm Butch, but he now had leapt off the berm and began to claw at Cassidy, who shrieked wildly and caused North to fall back off his hunches. But without the blunt sword to deflect M2's attempts to subdue him, the MewTwo was able to slap him into a bubble, where he began to scream and curse uncontrollably. North signaled M2 with a twirl of his finger for him to start a spin cycle with Butch acting as the wet clothes.

"Not here, my pretty," the malevolent spirit continued from its prison. "It wasn't here... it was far - far away and a long time ago. Yesss... you look different now, but I never forget a stubborn soul like yours, little Mew!" The dog-like face of Misdreavus split into a wide toothy grin.

An expression of shock swept across PBM's face. "What are you saying? Mew? Long ago? You...? I was not! You're lying to me, Misdreavus!"

Misdreavus rolled its eyes and howled. "Think what you like... But I can tell what happened to you, my little Mew!"

The orb was plucked from the air and held up to Peanut's slit eyes "I know very well what happened in my 'other' past and _YOU _had nothing to do with it!"

Misdreavus dodged a psyblast she shot at it, though it did burst the containment sphere. "Heh, you're a better shot than you were back then," it giggled as it backed away from her, "but you were only an infant when last we met."

M2 glanced questioningly at the other MewTwo as he slapped another containment field over the ornery Misdreavus. He was surprised to see tears glimmer in her wide dark eyes. But she would not let them fall.

Meowth still seemed totally disoriented from his ordeal. "What is dat 'ting?" he demanded of North. "Why is Butchy boy trying to off Cassidy? And how on Earth did I wake up in dat... dat... dat Lady's or whatever's arms? An' last bot not coitanly least, where da Persian are we?"

North got down to the cat's level and put his arm over his shoulder. "Well, first of all... we're in a field..."

"Okay... uh huh..."

"And it's incredibly dark out... so dark that I don't even see stars - just that moon up there, which is our only light"

"Yeah, yeah... so where's are we's?"

North slapped him on the back. "Your guess is as good as mine!"

"My, sir! That was incredibly logical!" the head of the android said as it tried to access its body's backup systems.

PBM shook her head. Of the vague memories she had of her pre-past, a Misdreavus was in none of them. She knew she had been an experimental clone, and that her 'donor' had been a young Mew, of course, and that it had drowned somehow in the flooded Amazon basin - she had nightmares about that. In her dreams the water flooded into her mouth and choked her because she was too young to know how to save herself.

She snapped out of it. "Misdreavus, I care not what your vile kind have to say. I am the master here. YOU WILL OBEY!" She was shocked, was that her own voice? Why had she said that? Why had she said LIKE that?

The Misdreavus cowered. M2 glanced at PBM with a look of respect. She continued. "You WILL answer my questions. Why have you brought us here? Where are the human children? Why does the black crow fill the skies this night?"

The Misdreavus snarled. It had been defeated by a will stronger than its own.

"Pah," it spat. "I never thought you'd be back. My master seeks you. The Murkrow! They want you all here! They want to peck at your torn carcass! They want the children's souls! They want you - you and all the others, bleaching skeletons in the sand here, dearie."

M2 reached over and spun its sphere to face him. "Then where are those children, Misdreavus!" he spat.

The specter eyed him. "Perhaps you should find out yourself! I know where you came from as well, and it's an even better story than hers!" It then faded away like a puff of smoke leaving only a cloudy ball in M2's paw.

"NO!" cried Peanut. "We can't let it escape!"

M2 looked at the ball in its paw and crushed it. "That tears it!" he snarled. "That was outright impossible!"

North looked at the reading his scanning rod was giving him and nodded in agreement. "You're telling me, unless you're now a plant. "This thing just told me that you're a rutabaga. This is telling me more and more that we're not really here. It's either that, or reality has taken a vacation."

A single Murkrow let out a caw.

"I won't let them have those souls." said the small MewTwo, clenching her fists. "I won't let them hurt those children! Not now or ever!"

"Yea? Well wot about us bright eyes!" Meowth yelped from behind James' legs.

* * *

_Meanwhile, in a nearby grove…_

"What the hell is all of this?" a fiery red-haired member of the Rocket Elite pondered as she stepped on a pile of dried leaves. Her black leather jacket snapped in a gust of wind as the trees around her howled. She had just finished her latest mission and was making her way through the Viridian forest outside the Sylph grounds when she noticed the unnatural look to the sky. She continued on towards the special 'back door' she would have used to enter the headquarters but found it missing.

"Crap," she grumbled as she studied the altered surrounding. "All I wanted was a good night's sack out."

She took the bow that she was carrying off her shoulder and readied an arrow.

She heard a shifting of branches towards her right. Two arrows of flame were instantly in flight.

Back in the field, there was a huge blast to their left. Fire spread through the dark forest far beyond the wagon. It seemed to be now bursting in a second spot as the flames spread up the path.

PBM and M2 crouched down expecting another attack as North casually scanned the inferno that was swallowing up that end of the woods. At first they did not notice the figure streaking across the face of the flames, but then she exited the pyre she had created.

"She's getting quicker," the scientist said out loud causing the MewTwos to twitch an ear each in his direction. "No doubt about it..."

She was short but fast. Her shoulder-length red hair flowed behind her with a strand dangling across her face. She wore all black that normally would have made her harder to see her in the dark confines they were in, but the bow she held in her hands had flames running up its limbs to its nocks with a long dark arrow seated on the string waiting to be launched. When she finally noticed those at the bottom of the depression she snapped to, pulled back the black string and aimed.

"Who the hell are you?" the girl yelled to the group. "And what the hell is going on here!"

The droid had finally managed to get its body's backup systems to activate, and was planting its beat up head on the severed neck mounts when she demanded her question be answered. "Ah... another h-human," it stuttered. "B-but my - my scANNERS scanners scanners ssssay that she is alll - also a Pokémon? Diag... Diag... Diag... NOSTICS! I m-must run diagnostics as SOON as p-p-p-possible..."

North stepped around the two defending MewTwo. "Charm, what is with the bow and arrows? Not satisfied with the Black Katana anymore?"

The dark angry woman suddenly bopped up with a gleeful "Oh... hi Rob!" She spun the bow around, and like blowing out a match, it extinguished itself as she slipped it over her shoulder.

"Care to introduce us?" M2 asked as he and Peanut stood up.

North cleared his throat. "Ahem... This is Charm, one of Giovanni's elite agents..."

"An independent agent," she corrected him.

"An independent agent," he concurred, "who happens to be a ShadowFlare Master... that's quite a barbeque you seem to have going on over there... anyone we know you're roasting?"

"Its zombie night at the grill!" she grinned. "What the hell is going on here?"

"You're guess is as good as mine, though we have some pretty good ideas," the scientist said as he scanned beyond her. "And unfortunately, you being here kind of wipes out one of my theories..."

"Which was?" Jessie asked nervously.

"That this was all an illusion and we weren't here at all." He shook his head and put his hand on the small gothic girl's head making her grumble. "Charm here works on the same type of dark energy that the Misdreavus work on, so they'd cancel each other out. The only way she would have come into all this is if she were to have come in on her own."

"Diag... diagnostics complete... she is human... but... Pokémon? My scanners still read her as part Pokémon," the droid said as it soldered some leads between its head and neck.

North knocked the droid's head. "Charm IS human... but as a ShadowFlare Master, she can use Dark and Fire attacks as if she were a Pokémon."

A gust of wind blew around them. An angry "MUUUUU!" cried out above them.

"Well, that was rude!" Charm said as she whipped the bow off her shoulder and lit its flames.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SISTERS!" the Misdreavus bellowed as it reappeared overtop them.

"Stick that tongue out again... I want to see if I can pierce it..." Charm mumbled as she took aim.

"OOH! I like her!" Jessie cheered.

"She's so carefree and destructive!" James giggled.

Charm lowered her bow and glared at the two of them.

"We'll be quiet now!" they both whispered as they hushed one another.

"Dat's a promise!" Meowth added as he ducked behind them.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!" Misdreavus yelled at her, oddly no longer for the ears of the MewTwos as everyone understood her.

"That is a good question," North said as he put his hand on her arm to lower it. "What are you doing here? You were half a continent away on an assignment."

"You mean on another of Gio's 'You're probably not going to come back alive' trips?" she smirked. "I really despise that guy. What's he think I am? A pushover? Anyway, I finished early and was reporting in when I found all this going on!"

"I wonder if there are any other 'special agents' in here as well," M2 mused.

North gurgled. "I hope not... look at what Charm did!"

"HEY!" she barked. "If I'm not wanted..."

North held his hands up. "No, no, it was never meant like that!" he said. "It's just that since you proved that we are certainly here, we have to be careful what we do to each other and those in here with us."

Charm returned her aim on the specter overhead, but was visibly perplexed by what he had just said. "Huh?"

"Well, what were you shooting at in the forest?" he asked.

Charm gestured over towards the fires still burning, and the shadowy figures that could be seen. "Umm... them!"

Jessie and James wrapped themselves together in a tight bundle. "ZOMBIES! GHOSTS! THINGS!" they screamed. North shook his head and scanned them.

"Just as I thought... did you kill any of them?"

Charm scratched her nose on her shoulder as she continued to hold her bow over her head. "I may have baked their biscuits a bit, but I don't know... why does that matter?"

"BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT ZOMBIES!" the two MewTwos yelled.

"Thank you," North commented to them. "They are correct though... these humans and some Pokémon are actually possessed. Killing them would not be a good thing!"

She shrugged. "No skin off my nose, but ShadowFire is always a good way to torch ghosts!"

The Misdreavus hissed at her. "You shall regret returning so soon then ShadowFlare Master!" It then vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Sounds like you two have a history," North noted.

"Sh-shall I p-p-pull it up ffffrom the datatatata file sir?" the android attempted to say. North waved it away.

Charm spat as she lowered her bow. "Damn things... You'd think after defeating them once before they'd leave me alone!"

"I don't think you were on their list when this all started," North suggested. "It's good to have you here now though... the more troops the better."

"Can I get out of this now?" Butch asked as he continued to spin in his containment sphere.

M2 burst the bubble and dropped the dizzy Prince of a Rocket on the android.

"I don't understand any of this," Peanut stated as she pinched her eyes. "But no children will lose their souls as long as I draw breath."

"Children? Brats? What are you talking about?" Charm asked.

"See what you miss when you're out of town?" North quipped as he handed her his copy of the vile memo that started all this mess.

"Oh crap, not this again!" she yelped as she opened the orange paper. "I didn't think Gio was doing me a favor by trying to kill me!"

"Nice... the fact of the matter is that the children and their PokéBalls are missing from the wagons, and we have to find them fast!"

Charm wadded up the note and torched it. She then looked back towards the burning forest and reloaded her bow. The shadow-figures were now starting to head in their direction.

"Say Jessie," James asked from within their embrace, "aren't we missing something?"

"For the last time, I told you I set the VCR to record that!" she scolded him.

PBM looked around. "No! He meant Meowth! Where did he go?"

"Actually, Jessie knew exactly what I meant," James murmured as he grinned. "Oh no! Where is Meowth?"

* * *

The chatty cat was following a strange scent he had smelled while hiding behind his mates. He hadn't realized just how far from the group he had strayed, but now it did not matter to him, for a power had taken over his feet and would not hold him away. The power... of his stomach.

"Ummm... what is dat aroma? Its sweet and succulent... oooh, if I could only find its source!" he drooled as it dragged him willingly along.

* * *

A worried look flicked across Peanut's wide lavender eyes. "I get the feeling none of us should be wandering around alone tonight." she said.

The droid nodded as it dumped the heap of Butch off itself. A few sparks shot from its neck as it did so, and it sighed. "I'm going to need a looong stop at the mechanics sh-sh-shop after this is all over." it muttered.

"Meeeeowth!" called the MewTwo "Meeeeoooooooowwwwth?"

"Oh sure," Cassidy muttered bitterly. "Call more attention to us, why don't you. 'Let the ghoulies get us... Stupid feline."

PBM ignored her as she continued to circle the group as she, M2 and their newest arrival stood their ground as the zombied people and Pokémon continued to advance slowly. "Does any one know anything more about this Misdreavus or the creature it calls its master?" she asked.

"I - I do...I think," James said nervously.

"You do?" Jessie asked with surprise. "How would you know about it?"

"I remember something about it in my 'Junior Pokémon Trainer's Guide' that I had when I was young... Mumsy got me all the volumes... Growlie and I would sit and read them all day long..."

"But WHAT DID THEY TELL YOU!" Jessie bark as she was annoyed by him reminding her of his rich upbringing... AGAIN...

"Well, I remember reading that it was supposed to deliver nightmares from the land of dreams to little children. It doesn't have any more power than any other ghost-type Pokémon in real life, but in the dream world it has real strength."

PBM shuffled to her side. "So it's an evil Pokémon?"

James scratched his cheek. "No, not exactly. It only delivers bad dreams, it never hurts anyone. It is said to be quite shy and harmless."

M2 launched a flair burst. "Well these aren't," he noted as the light showed scattered Misdreavus floating over the possessed below them.

"What is making them so angry with us?" Peanut asked as she watched the light dim.

North grimaced. "I've seen this in ghosts before, but there is normally a physical manifestation of sorts... there doesn't seem to be any with this one. They seem to be willingly following orders."

"You mean of the Murkrow?" James asked.

"MURKROW!" Charm flared. "Those little witches? I HATE Murkrows! You think they're pulling the Misdreavus' strings?"

North drew in a breath and looked at M2, who had an ugly look on his face as well. "No, but we've got a pretty good idea who does..."

"Well, are you going to spill it?" Jessie barked.

Remember what the Misdreavus said," North noted. "Murkrow wants souls... Souls for its master..." North closed his eyes. "I pray that I'm wrong, but so far..."

"...So far, all signs would point his way," M2 finished.

"What?" PBM asked. "Who are you talking about?" She then saw the expression on the human's face, and the blood drained from her soul.

"Last year, one dimensional level above us, there was a battle. On the one side was, well, to put it bluntly, the good guys... A team made up of members of Team Rocket, the Stratus League, and the Pokémon League."

M2 nodded. "On the other side was an evil that used ghost Pokémon as a means to steal souls and life energy from all living things then feed it back to itself..."

"We thought we had destroyed it... Burned it to a crisp..." North said, shaking his head. "We lost many friends..."

"We came down to this level as a break from the rebuilding going on up there..." M2 added. He dropped his head, and PBM could have sworn she saw him sob. "That... beast... he took my Mew!"

PBM gasped. "A Mew? You had a Mew?"

"They're legendary!" James agreed. "They're so rare that they're concidered extinct!"

Jessie glared at him. "How could you find a Mew?" she asked almost incriminatingly. "My mother was lost trying to find one of those!"

M2 looked at her with sad eyes. "I'm sorry - we know that. You see, Peanut and I are MewTwo... Advanced clones created from the DNA of Mews salvaged from their remains."

Jessie turned to North with an angry look. "Clone? Is this from one of your projects?"

The scientist wiped his glasses. "No," he told her. "They are the results of projects commisioned by the Splice and Dice departments. They were also responsible for sending your mother down there to either find and capture a Mew, or locate the remains of any."

Jessie returned her glare to the larger psy-cat. "So, how did YOU find a Mew?"

"Umm, Jessie..." She noticed North pointing to his head. "Mews and MewTwos are psychic? All he had to do is sense, and they'd find one another. And when that happens..."

"...They either fight or they pair up," M2 shook. "Because... a Mew is the closest thing we have to a brother, a sister... or a mate..."

Peanut felt the hate swell in M2, and she felt his sorrow as well. The memory was tearing him apart inside. She placed a paw on his shoulder.

"Who? Who took you Mew from you?" she asked.

M2 looked up at the sky and saw the eyes again - Deep red and glaring eyes. They were his all right.

"YOU!" he shouted, drawing every ounce of energy he could muster into a massive beam of energy that he blasted up at those eyes. But the energy simply went between them as they squinted in an evil chuckle.

"Ha ha ha, so, at last you have remembered me... how nice," the eyes said. "You may try all you like with your fireworks... you can't get me with a simple energy burst... I've evolved!"

North stared at the eyes. "Impossible!" he called out. "You're a clone! A clone with a closed end helix within your DNA - You should have ceased to mutate any further!"

"Yes... a gift from my more mortal self," it chortled. "But as a clone, whose life was started by a mistake - a crossing of a Haunter's energy and the DNA of my Lugian host changed that. I evolved even then, you pitiful fool!"

North scowled. "No, its YOU who doesn't seem to understand," he yelled. "You're a closed chromosome. You CAN NOT EVOLVE! PERIOD! Yes, you can absorb the life-force out of your victims, but that's not evolving. That's living as a leach!"

"S-sir?" the android asked of his master. "You do understand y-y-y-you're attempting to have an intellectual discussion with an insane murderous b-b-b-being from aaaaaa-NOther dimension?"

PBM watched the evil eyes look down on them. "Who IS that?" she asked again.

M2 held his paws as if his cat ancestry were baring claws. "Black Lugia!" he snarled. "The destroyer of my world, and all others up to the sixth level... responsible for BILLIONS of lives lost... and the killer of my Mew!"

"Tsk, tsk... Such a sorry story you bare upon me MewTwo of my home... But as I _**evolved**_, I became more than just your dreaded Black Lugia," the eyes said. "I've moved on from that, yes! And I have you and your merry little band of heroes to thank for this blessing!"

"What?" M2 and North said together. That was not what they wanted to hear.

The eyes chuckled at their distress. "If you hadn't had all the Legendary Birds attack me when that Pikachu Angel bore through me, if you hadn't burned my essence, releasing the stored energy that I had built up, I would have never been able to move to THIS level and start anew as a simple energy being! And once here, all I needed to do was obtain new help from the Misdreavus and the Murkrows here to find new souls, new life for ME!"

"What about these Misdreavus?" North called up to it. "They don't seem to be influenced like the Haunters were!"

The eyes looked down on the spirits that were controlling the oncoming zombies. "I had little I needed to do with them to gain their support... they seemed quite willing to help out voluntarily. It would seem that they already felt betrayed by the humans and Pokémon on this level!"

"Great, a Pokémon with a grievance!" Butch croaked as he rubbed his head from where he struck the android earlier.

"We are in real deep doo doo!" the robot said as it adjusted a neck bolt. His head kept falling to one side.

"I wish you guys would get this re-acquaintance over with, 'cause these zombies are getting closer!" Charm yelled at them.

North stood back and glared up at the eyes. "Okay... so you've become more than the Black Lugia... What do we call you now? Darkening Skies? You sound like a weather front more than a evil being out to strip my life away!"

"_**Mauvais!"**_

The group was surprised to hear another voice behind them. They all spun around to see who it was.

"Ah... okay, what are you two doing here?" North asked as he gaped in surprise.

Jessie looked up at the sight behind the group. Her eyes widening as she clutched James' shoulder tight.

"OW! Jessie! What is it?" he yelped in pain as she clung to him.

Her mouth hung wide, but she could only whisper, "Mother?"

"Myamoto!" North yelled. "Gett'um girl!"

Above them floated the form of Team Rocket's best agent ever, and Jessie's mother, Myamoto Lillis-Musashi. She acknowledged North, and returned her gaze upon the evil that was before them. Then a pink streak flashed by her and M2 felt an old feeling.

"Oh... my!" exclaimed PBM at the small glowing creature. "Is that..."

"A Mew! MY MEW!" M2 yelled, watching the pink shape get smaller and smaller as it climbed into the dark sky. It was the size of a small star when it suddenly snapped to the left, and began to make a sweeping arc around the eyes.

"Quickly M2," Mya called down to the MewTwo. "Help your Mew! She needs to encircle Mauvais with an energy ring, and only your energy is compatible with hers!"

M2 nodded and was about to take off, when he stopped. He looked perplexed for a moment as he looked up at Myamoto. He then crossed his arms and stepped back as he settled back down to the ground beside his fellow MewTwo.

"What are you doing?" PBM whispered to him. "Didn't you say that was your Mew?"

North looked at M2. "No, he's right! It's a matter of memory! Myamoto and Mew of Level 14 were destroyed in the final battle with the Black Lugia!"

"What are you waiting for?" Myamoto angrily yelled. "Mew needs your help!"

North turned to her. "A moment, ma'am... Would you care to explain how you got here to help us? You yourself WERE destroyed fighting, what did you call him now, Mauvais...?"

"Professor North, what are you doing?" Jessie yelled. "Leave my mother alone!"

"Is it your mother?" he snapped back at her. Jessie stopped and looked up at the vision floating there as North returned to the woman above them. "You yourself should know how deceiving it can be to believe in your own mother at times." **(¤1)**

Myamoto crossed her arms and glared at the scientist. "Do we have time for this?" she asked in exasperation. "Mew and I came to this level the same way Mauvais did, our remaining energy was deposited here!"

North pointed at Myamoto. "At the time you were a spirit! And as we who fought the Black Lugia know, a spirit can be renewed as long as there is even a smidgen of it left!"

"Obviously," the purple-haired serior Rocket replied in exhasperation.

North waved a finger at her. "But the Mew wasn't! When Black Lugia destroyed it, she should have been taken lock, stock and barrel!" he barked. "Quickly, name - rank!"

Mya rolled her eyes. "Myamoto Lillis-Musashi, Captain in Team Rocket..."

"WRONG!" North shouted. "You should have said MyamotoTwo!"

Jessie looked at North as if he'd just said that she had two heads. "W-what?"

"The Myamoto that helped us with Team Two and was helping M2's Mew was the spirit of a CLONE, and KNEW it!"

"They're nothing but figments!" M2 added.

"NO!" Jessie yelled, sobbing at the vision before her. She stood up and started to run for the floating image of her mother, but M2 fired an orb of energy through it, dispersing the phantom, and leaving a strange smoldering sight indeed.

It flopped to the ground at Jessie's feet with a dazed look on its face.

North looked at the critter. "Well now... how about that... A Murkrow!"

Suddenly the field behind them made the sound of hundreds of cawing.

* * *

Meowth crept to the top of a ridge. The smell that had drawn him away from the others was coming from below, and even with all the strangeness happening above him in the skies, the aroma still commanded him closer to the edge.

He peered down. Below him he saw what looked like a gypsy encampment. And within the gathered caravan trailers were four of the other Hayride wagons. Nearby, he saw the children dancing before a large bonfire, whooping it up and having one heck-of-a party. The smell was coming from the cook wagon. It was nearly irresistible!

Shoot, it WAS irresistible! He was down the hill and into the chuck wagon before you could say Jigglypuff three times!

The food was incredible! Meowth felt like he had found the Gingerbread House from Hansel & Gretel & SlowKing. There were cookies and sweets and food galore, and all for the greedy little cat!

Then his sharp ears caught something. Two strange voices from behind the counter.

"Did you see how he's wolfing it all down?" one asked.

"Ha, let him! It'll save on stuffing him later!" the second said.

"Mmmm! What a delicacy! Roasted Meowth!" the first one said.

Meowth didn't wait to hear the second's response. He burned a trail back up the hill. After all, he needed to tell the others where the kids were!

* * *

The Murkrow twitched and the Mew-ring around Mauvais' eyes vanished. The others gathered around the fallen bird as James comforted his partner as she wept onto his shoulder.

North and Charm looked back at the eyes, as they gleefully watched the hurt it had inflicted on them.

"Charm, how are you at fighting a swarm?" North whispered to the fiery red haired lady beside him. M2 and PBM took notice and looked in North's direction.

"Depends," Charm grinned, adjusting the arrow on her bow. "Ah, I see what you mean!"

"Peanut! Beside me!" M2 called as he snapped back into a defensive position.

PBM winced. She could see black shapes moving in the distance against the blue-black sky. Shapes started to pass over the face of their only light – the overly large full moon. Then it started to dim as the swirling blob of black began to mass across its surface.

North grabbed the android and started to rummage through its deep pockets. He pulled a pair of binoculars out. Switching them to night vision, he was first to confirm what was coming.

"Murkrows! A huge swarm of them!" he announced. He then yanked the optics from his face as he was blinded by a flash.

"Are you all right?" M2 asked as he watched the scientist stumble.

"Yea," North grumbled as he rubbed his eyes of the spots swirling there. "Something bright zapped me... just a second..."

"Look! Look at that!" PBM called out. A line of glowing red now stretched across the bottom of the mass of swirling black that was coming towards them.

North adjusted the power of the night vision and brought the binoculars back up to his face.

"Aw nuts!" he said.

"More doo doo?" the droid asked.

"Ohhh yea..." North said. "Red Haunters... In a strip wave pattern. And they're heading right for us!"

"What does that mean?" PBM asked M2, as she watched him concentrate on his defenses.

"The Black Lugia was a clone experiment by the Team Rocket labs of Dimensional Level 14. While they were energizing the DNA they had collected from that level's Lugia with a proton ray, a Haunter was captured by the beam's path, and was absorbed into the beast's DNA," he explained. "Once he had been set free, it was found that he could control ghost Pokémon, turning them into what you're seeing here, red ghosts. They would attack living organisms, drawing off their life force energy, and leaving blackened husks behind. Their most effective attack pattern was what was called a strip wave, where a huge mass of ghosts would simply sweep down and wipe out all life within their path!"

"And we've got a class one strip wave en route!" North said.

"Anything else I should know?" Charm asked the pair.

"Yea, the ghosts hate fire," North said with a grin towards her.

"Pika!"

M2 glanced behind them at the small orb he had left earlier. Inside was a perfectly fine looking Pikachu.

"North, the Pikachu is back to normal!" he said as he returned to the matter at hand.

North lowered the binoculars and looked back at it. "That's not good news..."

"He's food, right?" M2 said as he quickly released the Pokémon.

North nodded. "Damn... I was really hoping we weren't really here..." he said as he returned to scanning the approaching hoards.

PBM stared at the Pikachu for a moment as it shook its head and groused about having been cooped up in that sphere all this time. It certainly had a rather spicy Pokémon vocabulary for a Pikachu. But there was still something about this electric rodent... as if it was not quite right or the same about it over other Pikachus she had seen. She returned her gaze towards the wave of Red Haunters pondering.

"M2" she whispered "These are ghost elements, right? Psychic?"

He glanced questioningly at her. "Of course," he nodded.

She smiled and drew in a deep breath. She threw her head back and called out, "Pikachu, to me!" Surprised, the electric Pokémon ran to her side.

"W-what are you doing?" asked Jessie as she wiped her face. PBM tapped her nose and winked at her.

"Pikachu, charge for an elemental stream," she commanded. "Prepare to focus my energy."

The Pikachu, who should have had no idea what she was talking about, closed its eyes and concentrated. PBM's own eyes seemed to grow brighter, their soft purple pupils focusing on the incoming ghost wave.

M2 looked over at North who had switched his scanning from the incoming mass to the MewTwo and Pikachu. He gave his friend a motion with his hand to move aside a bit, which he quickly did.

Charm also stepped away, more because the MewTwo was bothering with her own concentration. "Get it over with already!" she grumbled.

"Now is the time..." she whispered. "Now... STRIKE!" she called.

"CHUUUUUUUUU!" the Pikachu squealed as it released its energy skywards. Peanut swirled her own energy around the lightning bolt and merged it, sending a cascading fury up to meet the Haunters

"DOUBLE EXCORSISM!" Her voice hit a high note and hung there. Above them, the now massive first wave of red ghost vaporized instantly. The Pikachu collapsed, completely drained of its reserves. PBM's eyes began to cross and uncross again as she staggered back into the arms of North and his droid copy.

"Well that was a new one..." he said as they put her down and examined her smoldering paws.

"What the frack did she just do?" Charm asked as she rubbed the spots from her own eyes and returned the bow to its launching position.

North pointed to the drained Pikachu the Female MewTwo was moving to pick up. "She used the Pikachu to add high voltage electricity to her own powers then tapped into the ghost's own attacks. She used that connectivity to turn their own power on themselves then added a blast of her own... They weren't expecting that, and it took quite a few of them down... Very creative."

"Yea... creative... damn near blinded me..." Charm cursed.

"It's started a chain reaction," M2 reported as the bursting red specters continued off to either side of the initial shot.

"Oog... my head..." Peanut muttered as her eyes rolled. "We wont be doing that one again soon, eh my little Pikachu?" she gurgled. "No we won't! No, no no!"

"What's with Miss Kitty?" Charm asked as she let fly with an arrow. It opened a blue void behind it that struck through the first line of Murkrow knocking them out of the sky and into the fields beyond.

M2 cleared his throat. "Ah, well... we tend to get a bit... punch drunk when we deplete our energy resources..." he mumbled. He added, "Nice shot..." as he watched the result of her arrow. He added his own salvo or two to the fray, knocking another section of dark birds from the sky.

PBM shook her head. She was supposed to be in a defensive position, not on the ground bobbing for Pikachus! "M2... you said you battled these, last year?"

"I fought the Black Lugia and the Red Haunters last year," he said between salvos. "Not the Murkrows or the Misdreavus."

PBM looked up at the attacking creatures. "Do you think that they may have discovered your energy signature because of that?"

M2 rattled off a series of psy-blasts at a strafing line. "Its possible... we know that the possessed ghosts we had to deal with would acquire a taste for a living thing if they had a sampling of it... but I never was touched by any during our first encounter with them."

"No, but she might be on to something," North said as he considered what she was thinking. "Just the simple fact of having been around a Red Haunter, or having been hunted by one, would have given the Black Lugia knowledge of us... our strengths, capabilities... the works!"

"There's your problem," Peanut said as she got up and drew a breath. "If they know your energy signature, they can defend against it."

"Damn!" he said as he continued a series of pin-point energy bolts at incoming targets that would stray too close to them. "What college did you go to, lady?" he smiled. He then continued pressing the fight.

Peanut smirked. "Hypothetically, my attacks as well as Miss Charm's here will be more effective than yours right now, since they don't know our signatures and methods!"

North and M2 looked at one another and nodded. "Have we become too predictable in our old age?" North asked.

"Speak for yourself," M2 cracked. "I'm only four of your years old!"

Everyone looked at the MewTwo. It seemed odd for them to assume that he was older than he was, since he acted it. Mentally, he probably was, yet having been created as a modified clone, he could only be four and seem forty.

"Maybe it's time that we thought out-of-the-box," he suggested as he continued the lob bolts at the marauders.

"What have you got in mind?" Peanut asked as she rejoined the fight.

"Something that I didn't do last year..." he said as he stood back.

"I hope it's creative and imaginative, 'cause, HERE THEY COME AGAIN!" James shouted as he dove down behind Jessie. She whopped him yet again.

"Charm, the range of you arrows, please?" he asked the dark gothic girl beside them.

Charm looked at her shaft. "Mmm, roughly 600 yards, give 'er take depending if they're on fire or not..."

He nodded and looked around them. "Fire 'em up!" M2 said. "Shoot them off in a circle pattern around us.

Charm looked at him questioningly. "Do I hit anything?"

M2 shook his head no.

"Humph... waste of good arrows..." she grumbled. She tapped the bottom of her quill with the nock of her bow. A fresh load of arrows popped up like bread out of a toaster as it reloaded itself.

"Wait a minute," North yelped as he looked at the arrow-carrying sleeve that she had hung over her shoulder. "That's one of my storage shunts! Where did you scrounge that up from young lady?"

She game him a evil little grin. "Last time I stopped by Tech Lab One... you had one sitting on the side table that you didn't seem to need..." Before he could complain more, she lit up her first arrow and aimed. North shook his head and he and the droid moved up the hill a bit to scan the re-grouping Haunters. PBM's shot had split them down the middle like a scythe, and the remaining had banked off in a curving twisty arc.

"800 yards! Hurry!" he called as he got a reading from his binoculars. He glanced down the hill at the group and saw James and Butch looking rather dejected.

2 sets of binoculars plopped in front of them.

"Come on gentlemen... tactical range duty! Butch, take left point, James, right!"

Charm launched her first arrow out in a fiery straight line.

"300, 400, 500, 600, 700... 745," North rattled off the range as the arrow buried itself in the grass.

Charm was impressed. Better than she thought. She loaded another.

"Off that way," M2 said, pointing slightly to the left.

Charm let loose again. A slight down hill curve to the field made the arrow vanish at 760 yards. She sent another to the right of the first arrow, which went only 680. The next one to that she lobbed over the hill at short range.

"No problem... I can still feel it," M2 said. "Get another one off to the left..."

"Here they come!" North said.

As Charm continued to lob arrows behind him, M2 held his paws out. His fingers glowed, and he made a sweeping move. The fire on the arrows flared as if struck by gasoline, then swept across to the next arrow in line like a drawn curtain!

"YEOW! I just left dat barbecue fer anoth'a one!" Meowth yelped, as he just crossed the edge of the fire wall.

"Incoming cat!" James yelled. North turned his binoculars towards the right.

"Hope he knows to duck and cover!" M2 said as he formed a force field dome over them using the fire wall as a outer boundary. He then drew the flames over the shield.

"M2! You're over doing yourself!" PBM shouted, seeing the pain and sweat on the MewTwo's face.

He strained and grunted. "Must... do... this!" he snarled as he brought his powers to bear on his dome. "Elementals energize... YAAH!"

M2's eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head, as a surge of energy bolted from him. The Haunters and some Gastlys and Gengars had already been vaporizing against his dome of fire, but now it burst outwards in a ring of energy and flames. Ghosts popped like party balloons, as the ring spread upwards and outwards. Murkrows launched in a swarm from the fields in an attempt to avoid the flames.

"That's seems to have worked well," North said as he and the droid scanned the area. "All I see is a few out on the fringes... and they seem to be holding their distance."

"Same here," answered Butch from his vantage point.

"Ditto," James acknowledged.

PBM came over to M2. He was laying face first, heaving and panting hard on the ground. She touched his back, and felt a slight shock.

"Oh, what a headache..." he said then collapsed the rest of the way. PBM looked up the hill at North, who was already coming down with a scanning rod humming.

"Geeze kid," the scientist said. "You really did it that time..."

"What... what did he do?" she asked.

North looked at the MewTwo. "He took your hint is what he did... he forced a signal change... literally bent his frequency to a new range, then tossed an energy surge through himself.

"Had... to... oh, I hurt..." M2 said from his prone position.

"That's because you're half baked, buddy. What do you think you are, a Saiyan?" North chided the cat. He reached into the droid's pocket of goodies, and pulled a spray bottle and proceeded to coat the MewTwo.

"Yuck... super potion... I hate that stuff!" the psy-cat murmured.

"Well, close your yap and you won't have to taste it!" North continued with his bed side manner. "Help me turn him over," he told to PBM, as he started to roll his friend.

PBM looked at her paws, then at M2. She had felt the tingle earlier when she touched him... would it happen again?

She grabbed M2's shoulders and a slight tingle ran through her. But as for North...

As soon as PBM touched M2, North had been shocked clear of them, back up the hill, as if he had been grounded when lightning struck. He looked up, adjusting his glasses.

"Shocking," he said, noticing his hair was now sticking out in all directions. He brushed it back, listening to the giggles of the lady Rockets nearby.

PBM gasped. "Professor North!" she yelled.

He looked over at the MewTwos. "Oh damn..." he said as he jumped up and started pulling a few more medical items from the droid's pockets.

M2 was now on his back. A deep burned scorch mark ran up his belly to his chest.

"I thought I heard you say something about elementals..." North grumbled. "You took energy from the planet, didn't you?"

"Only way... only way to change frequency..." M2 moaned.

"You really did fry yourself, buddy," North said, applying a foam spray to the wound. North looked at a device he pulled from the pocket and swore again, stuffing it back.

"What was that?" PBM asked as North continued to work.

"Wound healer... except it doesn't work on clones..." North snarled.

"Dat was some light show!" Meowth said, finally making it back to the group. "Whoa, big cat... you's went an' nuked yerself!"

"Shut up and put your finger here Meowth!" North growled as he had the small cat hold a wrap bandage he had yanked out of the droid's pocket across M2's chest.

"Shh!" PBM said as she cocked her head. "Do you hear that?"

They heard what sounded like slowed clapping coming from overhead.

"Oh bravo... Bravo! I must say, you do put on quite a show!"

"Mauvais!" PBM growled. She turned to look at where the eyes were before, but got a face full of the Misdreavus instead.

"Really!" the specter said in the voice of Mauvais. "The ring of fire energized by an Earthly power source, inspired! I applaud you!"

"You - YOU'RE Mauvais?" PBM asked, startled by the sight.

"What, this? No... I only use the Misdreavus from time to time as a vessel for my conscience. It helps me get around with the little people!" cackled Mauvais.

North semi-ignored the ghost. "Interesting choices of name there, B-L... Mauvais? French for evil, isn't it?"

"Ah, you know your French, ea?"

"I have my dictionaries... I also have THIS!"

North pointed the wound healer at the Misdreavus.

"YAAAAH! WHAT - WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" Mauvais yelled.

"Stimulation of the energy of the being you're in," North said rather matter-of-fact. "This device won't work on clones, but it works on any other life forms or energy... and the Misdreavus is mostly gas and energy... You don't belong in it, therefore, my guess is that it won't mind if I get you out of it!"

"RRRRRRRAHHHH! I WILL DESTROY YOU SCIENTIST!" Mauvais bellowed, until it shot from the Misdreavus into the sky. Once again, the eyes burned the night, and the Murkrows covered the stars. But then they seemed to morph into clouds, and lightning crackled across the skies.

M2 reached up to North. "You've done it now. He'll be coming after you next..."

North smiled, while continuing with his work on the wound. "Better me than you, boss."

PBM looked at North. "Boss?"

"Figure of speech," M2 said.

"Respect," North added.

Meowth stuck his head into the conversation. "Listen you's guy, I don't wanna interrupt dis mutual admiration society, but I've got news! I've found da kids!"

"Probably found food too... I can smell garlic on your breath..." North said. "Where?"

"Over da hill - burp! - About a quarter mile dat way!" the cat Pokémon pointed.

North looked at his work. "James, Butch, Charm... start off. I've got to finish here. We'll follow when we can."

North looked at PBM. "You too, ma'am," he told her.

"But..." she started then found M2's hand tingling in hers.

"They'll need your help... go... please..." he told her.

"Pika..." The Pikachu had come over, and had climbed onto PBM's shoulder.

"Get going..." North said. "We'll be fine. Save the children."

She nodded, stood up, and followed the group as they headed over the hill.

Once out of range, North looked over at the droid.

"Droid, what's your power pack like?"

"Intact sir... Auto restore on power systems. Fully charged."

North nodded. "Set your auto destruct... just in case..."

"Acknowledged..." the droid said.

_**And the Roll Play Rolls On...**_

**(¤1)** – See _**"**__**Fate's**__**Game**__**"**_ by TiredGamer – FFN story #640818


	3. Team Rocket's Gypsy Dance

.

**A F T E R ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**

**T h e ¤ R P G / S**

Based on the FanFic series

**T H E ¤ L U G I A ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**

By Anne Ruecroft & R. A. Stott

and

The RPG

**'****TEAM ****ROCKET****'****S ****HAUNTED ****HAYRIDE****'**

Compiled, edited and rewritten by R. A. Stott

Contributing Authors for this chapter -

PeanutButterMewTwo, ArkNorth, Charm and babyjigglypuff

* * *

**Chapter Three**

**TEAM ROCKET'S GYPSY DANCE**

The children's voices carried across the night air. They were singing something about 'Hyaku-Go-Juuichi'. PBM absentmindedly stroked the Pikachu on her shoulder while rushing on towards the glow beyond the hill before her.

"I didn't want to leave him there," she whispered, more to herself than to the Pikachu. "He's hurt. I shouldn't have let them make me go." Her stomach hurt - Not the way it would if she were ill - but because of intense worry.

"Dere day are!" Meowth called out, pointing over the hill. The others were way ahead of her, and it took the chatty cat's call to wake her up from her slowing glide. She watched as the paired teams vanished over the raise. She was about to follow after them, but came to a sudden halt, nearly tossing the Pikachu off when she thought better of it.

"I'll scare the children," she muttered to herself. MewTwos were more than just a rarity, and she knew the reaction her presence tended to create. She lifted the Pikachu off her shoulder and put him down beside herself.

"Now you," she told it, "I want you to go down and check on those kids for me, okay?"

The Pikachu nodded cheerily. It seemed to be not the overly brightest Pokémon she noted to herself. To still be so happy during a crisis seemed odd. Perhaps it was still dazed from its possession it had incurred at the whim of the Misdreavus. Even so, being nearly giddy made it look almost like it was STILL possessed.

"And you'll report right back to me?" she added. "Understand?"

"Pi-pi! Pikachuuuuu!" it commented.

"Watch you mouth!" she said. Overly cheery it might be, but the fact that this particular Pikachu seemed to have the Poké-Vocabulary of a Poké-Sailor still shocked her.

"Pika Pika piiii chuuu!"

She stepped back. "I am NOT afraid! I just don't want to scare the children!"

"Pii? Pika Pika Chu Chu Pi Chuuu?"

She thought for a moment. "That's true… it is Halloween after all…"

"Pii Pii Pika Pika!" it finally huffed and crossed its arms.

"I do NOT have STAGE FRIGHT! I just don't want to draw attention to myself! NOW SHOO!" She pointed a finger at the ornery electric-rodent. She lifted him off the ground and tossed him over the hill.

Her stomach growled. "Hey! If there's anything good down there to snack on, bring some of that back as well!" she called down to it. There was a brief Poké-Curse sent in her direction as she watched him scurry through the underbrush into the camp.

* * *

"Geeze, when you decide to fry yourself, you really don't go halfway," North muttered as he continued to bathe the burns across M2's chest and belly.

M2 grinned lopsidedly. "I do what I can. Damn! That really REALLY stings!" he winced again.

North smirked. "Take it like a man!" he admonished him.

"Oh, if you're going to insult me now…" the MewTwo grimaced.

North shook his head. "What's our hosts doing, droid?" he asked his less-than-mint looking android twin of himself.

"Oddly keeping th-their distance," it said through a digitized stutter. "Perhaps they sense my power center b-b-b-b… BUILDING up – burp – pressure…"

"Are you sure it isn't that bean burrito you ate earlier?" M2 chuckled as he held the corner of a gauze North was applying.

"Bean burrito?" the scientist yelped. "Droid, you know that isn't a normal lunch for me!"

"R-randomizing p-p-proGRAM suggested an alternate l-l-lunch option, as you are n-noted to be known to diverge from the nnnnnnORM from time-to-time when it c-c-c-comes to your meal, Professor," the android stated as it continued its sentinel watch.

North shrugged. "I'm giving these mechs too much IO I think," he grumbled as he shook a fresh bottle of SuperPotion, much to M2's distaste.

"Yea? Well remember, it did go into town to GET that burrito with that gaping hole and damage it already had from last year dangling off it," M2 weakly laughed, reminding the scientist that this was the same droid he had used as his duplicate during the Battle of the Sylph Company during the Black Lugia War.

"Okay... maybe I'm not giving it enough IO... or flat out common sense..." He started the fresh application on the wound.

"So, we're really here, right?"

North looked down at the MewTwo he was working on. M2 had laid his head back and was staring at the sky, such as it was, seeing that the mass of Murkrows were still obscuring any signs of the stars. "Yes?" he replied to the strange question coming from the normally so-serious Pokémon.

"You've met her before, right?"

It was not hard for him to put one and one together here to understand what the subject of the question was about. "Like I said, I've seen her a few times about. There seems to be an overabundance of MewTwos on this level. Every Tom, Dick and Jade Yukanna seems to have come up with or is working on one. It's one of the reasons I chose this level in particular – you stand out less here… not that it makes things any safer, seeing how you tend to go off like a bomb if you touch any other MewTwo. And, as you say, we are here, and I find it very interesting that you didn't go boomy when you actually touched her."

"Mmmm," M2 sighed. "Those eyes… did you see her eyes?"

North examined the bottle in his hand to make sure it did not have a warning about using heavy equipment while on SuperPotion. "Steady lad. Keep your mind on what's at hand, ea?" he poked him. "We have a bit more to worry about here than you and a cute lady."

"Says you," the MewTwo snorted. "Even if Droid-Boy here goes nuclear, I'll probably still get out of this in one piece!"

"Oh thank you!" North retorted in mock-shock. He knew that M2 would not leave him to such a fate… maybe… And he was not exactly sure about his prognosis about surviving anything his droid might let loose. Not at this time at least.

* * *

Peanut sat alone on the grassy knoll. She watched Jessie and Cassidy in the distance as they counted the kids down in the gypsy camp. Part of her wanted to be down there with them. Human children didn't bother her. After all, it had been a human child who had given her a name. She sat and remembered her face. She was named Miri, and she was Dr. Tsunami's daughter. Peanut laughed to herself. Miri had been a silly girl. She remembered the first time seeing her as she floated in her genetic fluids within her containment vessel in Tsunami's lab.

"_Daddy, what is it?" the small distorted face asked outside the glass wall. An only slightly taller man stepped up behind her and put his left hand on her head and gave the tube a slight tap with his right._

"_Well Miri, sweetling," he told her, "this one is an enhanced juvenile Mew clone. A female in fact."_

_The girl looked back at the man, which, because of the curve of the glass, made her face distort momentarily. Her nose seemed to grow then snap back into her head as she spun. This amused the growing clone._

"_A what?" she asked. "It's a what?"_

"_I said…" the man started._

"_OH!" the little boppet cried as she spun and jumped and planted her face against the tube. "It's a little girl! A little girl like me! Oh daddy! When will she be ready?"_

'_Ready?' the clone asked itself as it floated. 'What am I? Toast?'_

_"It…" the man stammered. "She's not exactly…"_

_The girl grabbed her father's hands and started spinning around with him. The clone could see beyond them to the shadowy figures in the background as they seemed to be amused by the antics going on over at the experiments station._

_"Will she be my friend?" she asked as they twirled. "Ever since we moved here there haven't been any other kids to play with! Thank you daddy!"_

_She released him, and he staggered about a bit as he attempted to recompose himself, and possibly also make the world stop spinning in his head. "Now, Miri, you have to understand, she's not a child like you are…"_

_The small face planted itself again. "I can show her the beach while you do your work!"_

_The __doctor __scratched __his __head.__ "__Miri, __this _IS _my __work.__"_

_The clone floated down to get a closer look at the strange face behind the glass.  
_

"_What's her name?" Miri asked as the creature slowly held a paw out towards her._

"_Well, um," the scientist said as he cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses, "Clone Number Four…" The mention of this 'name' made the body in the tube wince, which Miri duly noted._

"_Actually Clone Number A-7-QC-8-4-7 in Tube Four," someone in the blobby background announced which only made the creature curl up tighter. Even the scientist looked back in near disgust._

_"Clone Four," he sternly repeated._

_"That not a name!" Miri admonished them. "She's… what did you say she was? A Mew?"_

_The doctor rubbed his head. "Well, since she is an enhancement to the original, technically she will be a MewTwo."_

_The clone looked down at the girl on the other side of the glass and noted to herself that she had an extremely silly grin crossing her face._

_"Let's call her Peanut Butter MewTwo!" she announced in a blurt._

_The scientist looked behind himself. Two or three of the shadows seemed to shrug back at him._

"_Umm, Peanut Butter?" he asked his only child. "Why Peanut Butter, sweetie?"_

"_Because __she__'__s __the __same __color __as __my __favorite __thing __that __goes __with __peanut __butter__… __GRAPE __JELLY!__"__  
_  
PBM shook her head as she rested it on her paws, which were leaning atop her knees. She was being silly and sentimental. She snorted.

Of all her memories, why was that one coming up at a time like this?

"What I should be doing is trying to figure how we can defeat that… that THING," she told herself. She looked up into the dark sky. The two eyes that had been there were gone, but so was everything else. In fact, if the light of the caravan below her were not there, it would have been pitch-black.

A vision of the other MewTwo flashed across her mind. M2… it certainly was a unique name as compared to the few others she had run into. She had never met one so outgoing – most others she had met were almost introverted, wanting little to do with the outside world, least alone wanting anything like friends. This one even had an ADULT HUMAN as one!

And most of all, she never had met one who made a joke… other than herself that is…

"That's right, girl," she told herself as she sunk her head lower between her hands and knees. "Your type tends not to be the life of the party."

She remembered the horrific burns down M2's belly, the result of his following her lead. The thought made her shudder. He had tried to change his energy signature by using an elemental charge, which was successful, but made him the receptor of what basically was a lightning rod. It was based on what she had done with the Pikachu – she had rerouted her own energy through the other Pokémon. The results were that instead of her own psychic energy signature being projected, what was released on the Muuma and Murkrows was that of the Pikachu's.

'Now, if we were to take both of our powers,' she started thinking to herself, 'and route it through each other… neither signature would be traced. They would cancel each other out!' Her eyes lit up. 'That's it!' she crowed. 'I know what to do!'

"Pika?"

She looked around. The yellow electric rodent had returned from the camp and was at her feet. 'Oh, Pikachu! Are all the kids OK?'

"Pikapikakakapikapiii!" it rattled off mixed in with a little dance as it explained what it had found.

'Are you sure?' she asked it. 'I mean, with all that food, Meowth still returned to get us?'

"Pika – *_burp*_ – pika pi!"

She gave the rodent a wary eye. It grinned back.

'What about the children?' she flatly asked the yellow glutton again.

It scratched an ear. "Pika pi pi chuu!"

'Great!' she said as she craned to see past the wagons without levitating. 'I was worried. I really ought to have a look myself.'

"Pi – pika – chu?" her partner asked.

She winked. 'I know… I didn't want to frighten them. But I do have a way to 'blend in', so to say.' She knitted her brow and held her paw to her face. In a flash, the light purple MewTwo shifted her appearance.

The Pikachu stepped back and examined her. "Pika – pika – pika – pi –pi – chu – pi?" it critiqued in a question.

'Yes, I could have done this before,' she replied, 'but it does have its limitations. For one, I have to concentrate to maintain this illusion. The second is if anyone touches me, it will evaporate.'

"Chu – chu – pika – pi…" the Pikachu said as it strolled around her examining the cloak.

Peanut looked over shoulder at the shawl draped over them. 'Well, _Little __Red __Riding __Hood_ was a favorite book of a friend of mine. Why? Does it stand out too much?'

The Pikachu sat back on its lightning bolt of a tail and pondered what he saw. "Ummm – Chu – chu – pika…" it told her.

'Like a light bulb, ea?' she repeated its comment. The cape was a rather glaring red. She concentrated again, darkening it to a deep maroon. 'Better?' she asked.

"Chu!" the critter replied with an 'okay' gesture. Together, he and a brunette girl made their way down the hillside towards the camp.

"All right all you WONDERFUL children!" Jessie yelled through gritted teeth. "All that were with Jack the Pumpkin King and I gather at the red and green wagon in TEN MINUTES!" Her 'save the children' mood pretty much had left her after the third child that night had decided that they needed to pull hard on one of her 'Sally' yarn-like strands that her hair had been braided into.

"Aww, must we?" the short blond boy that had been such a problem on their wagon bellowed at her. "This is great! I've already had three burgers, a kabob, a sack of candy, and this HUGE malted! Come on Hobbes," he told a stuffed Persian doll he was dragging, "let's get some MORE!"

Jessie just stared at him. "It's amazing that he hasn't exploded," she mumbled. Over her shoulder she saw a strange girl with a Pikachu step into the camp from between a pair of trailers.

"Who are you?" she demanded, not trusting anyone she did not know after all that she had been put through this night.

The girl looked around to see if anyone was nearby. She then passed her hand over her head to reveal Peanut's face behind the camouflage. When she moved her hand by again, the girl's image reappeared.

Jessie blinked, as that show of facial hide-and-seek had done nothing to make her any more settled that she was dealing with this unknown Pokémon. "Oh… it's you…" was all she said.

'I wanted to check on the kids,' PBM told her IN HER MIND. This made the Rocket take a step back and shake her head, as she had not been expecting someone talking to her BETWEEN her ears rather than from the outside in.

"You might not want to communicate psychically, girl," Jessie scolded her as she held her forehead from the pounding headache she had just been delivered. "The brats seem to be okay, but I think a psychic teenager might scare them just as much as the sight of some weird uncommon Pokémon, like you! Mind you, I like the cape."

Peanut cleared her throat. "Dang… sorry…" she croaked through her mouth. She had not realized that she had reverted to speaking through her mind earlier when she had been talking to the Pikachu. "I'll try. I forgot how fragile your human senses are." She looked about.

Several of the children were crying. A few more were comforting them, as were James and Butch in their own unique way. On the other hand, others were eating the aforementioned burgers, plus stews, pastas and all sorts of other goodies that should have kept a greedy Meowth busy, if not that he had been suggested as being fattened up to become part of the meal earlier.

In the middle of it all raged a huge bonfire. Around it sang more of the children. Some were dancing, while others were tossing things into the blaze. Cassidy watched in confusion.

"Who cooked them all this food? Who built that huge campfire?" she asked no one in particular. Then a little boy with a scraped knee begged her attention.

PBM continued to examine the area. "She's right," she told Jessie. "Where are the gypsies? Have you seen any?"

The Rocket looked about with her. "You're right," she agreed. "When we arrived, all we found were the children."

"Well, deys were here!" Meowth caterwauled from a nearby tent. "Remember, dey wanted ta barbeque me!"

Peanut smirked. "I see you've recovered from the trauma quick enough," she remarked at the chatty cat, whose mouth could barely hold any more food. "We found the children easy enough, but what about those PokéBalls you said you had on your carts as well?"

He looked at her big eyed as he swallowed.

"Dang girl… what did you's do to yerself?" he asked when he realized that this girl was the MewTwo.

* * *

"I've got a lovely b-b-bunch of coconuts – there th-th-they are st-st-st-STANDING in a row…" the droid sat humming to itself, or at least mostly to itself, as it was doing it loud enough to make it disturbing to those with it.

"Could you stop that, droid?" asked North testily.

"Certainly," it replied, and continued humming to itself - rather off key as well.

M2 gave the bot a glare from his position on the ground. "Doesn't that thing have your memory inside it?"

North was looking more concerned with the wounds on his friend's belly than that of his doppelganger's poor musical skills. "Considering its condition, you think it's going to work normally?"

"So its memory systems are that messed up?" he asked. "Or do you actually sing THAT badly?"

North crossed his legs as he sat on the ground having tired of squatting. "Droid, why are you making that awful noise?" he asked it.

It stopped and looked jerkily over at the two on the ground. "I-I-I'm putting up a sonic sh-sh-sh-shield SETTTTTT at the proper modulation-n-n-n to keep the Murkrows away. But it should only be botherrrrrring them, not y-y-y-y-YOU, sir."

"Trust me, you're bothering us as well," M2 stated.

The droid cocked its head, causing its right ear to fall off and dangle by a wire. "Dist-dist-distURRRRrbing, yes," it corrected him, "but at least y-y-y-you're not getting the ear-splitting s-s-s-sound the Murkrows are receiving. Sh-shall I cease m-m—my masking song?"

"THAT WAS A MASKING SONG!" M2 shouted, which only made things sway more in his vision.

North tapped his glasses up his nose. "Continue what you're doing droid, but do it another few feet away, would you?"

"Understood," it replied and it stood up and moved to the edge of the path.

"Thank you," M2 said. North only smirked as he peeked under the gauze and scanned him again.

"Something's not right," he grumbled. "Why isn't this working?"

* * *

"Hey now, don't cry," Peanut cajoled a small girl. "It's OK. What's your name?"

A sloppy wet face rose from behind the arm and elbow that had been covering it. "E-Emirie," she told her.

Peanut bent down to Emirie's level. "So, why are you crying?" she asked in a gentle and tranquil voice.

The child sniffed. "I wanna go home!"

Peanut smiled. "Oh, don't worry, you'll get to go home soon enough."

"P-promise?"

"I promise."

"Pinky swear?"

It took PBM a moment to realize what this little girl had suggested. She looked at her 'hand' the projection she was making had created. She also remembered that if she was touched by anyone, it would fall, and her real form would be revealed.

"Er… how about we don't? Humm? Here… we can swear on this Pikachu!"

"Pika?" the yellow rodent asked as he was unceremoniously foisted off the ground and promptly squeezed between two small hands, a chin and an extremely underdeveloped chest until his beady little eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"Oh, it's soft!" Emirie squealed, much to the Pikachu's chagrin. And the psychic finger-to-his-nose from the MewTwo to NOT retaliate with a Thundershock had not helped his situation. He sighed.

PBM was a hit with the kids. She had made her image just the right age that she was someone the younger children would look up to, but at the same time, a kid like themselves. Like Emirie, many of her fellow kindergarteners had been afraid. Soon the now grumpy-looking Pikachu was being passed around for them to pet.

Jessie sighed as she looked over at Peanut's crowd. There were no problems there. Unfortunately, she wasn't so lucky.

"Please, please stop crying little boy! It's okay, see? Why don't you go have some supper with your friends?" she begged.

"NOOOOOOO! I WANT MY MOMMY! I WANNA GO HOME! I WANT MY POKÉMON!"

Jessie's hair would have stood on end if it had not been braided. And ANOTHER one of these cherubs just yanked on it again!

"I am never doing volunteer work again." she swore under her breath.

* * *

Charm grunted. "Brats… let these losers take care of them. They seem safe enough." Besides, much like PBM's worry about scaring the children, her garb and looks were not keeping them quelled much either. She quickly departed and headed back to where she felt she was really needed – protecting North, the only headquarters jerk who seemed to care what happened to her.

Four years before, in a fight staged by Giovanni and that level's Terminal Solutions, she had been pitted in a battle between herself and the latest PokéMorph, a hybrid gene-spliced creation of the Splice-And-Dice lab, of a 'volunteer' human and a Pokémon. In this particular case, they had made a Scizor-human mix. It was her job to go into the Team Rocket Fury Pit and size this test subject up. She was not allowed to use her sword or bow, and was given only two daggers and basic armor.

In the stands for this 'event' was the rare appearance of the head of Tech Lab One, Professor Robert North. At his assistance, mid way through the battle, which she felt she was winning, but later, video replay shown to her showed that she was being slowly worn down by the poisons the morph was able to generate, North wanted to pump the field with SuperPotion.

She remembered the look that crossed over Giovanni's face. It was foul, that grin that he gave the scientist's suggestion.

"_What!__" _she had shouted_.__ "__That__'__s __not __fair! __You__'__re __giving __this __thing __an __unfair __advantage!__"_

"_Then __you__'__ll __just __have __to __find __another __way __to __defeat __it,__" _North callously told her as a fog of the potion was injected into the battlegrounds.

Charm remembered the rage and anger she had swell through her. Her strength, which was being beaten down by this human-Pokémon mish-mash, exploded. It was only a few minutes later that she had severed the head off the abomination.

"_You __weren__'__t __supposed __to __KILL __him!__"_ one of the S&D scientists shouted._ "__He __had __been __one __of __my __best __assistants!__"_

"_Next __time, __try __it __with __a __WARRIOR __then!__" _Charm shouted back. She looked at the seat next to the Boss to give the man who she thought was trying to 'fix' the battle a piece of her mind, but found his chair empty.

"_Be __ready __for __your __next __mission __in __the __morning,__" _Giovanni told her as he stood and left the arena.

She stormed through the Sylph Building, finding the entrance to the Tech Lab unguarded. She pounded the two swinging doors, nearly snapping them off their hinges as she entered.

"_It__'__s __about __time __you __got __here,__"_ she heard. She looked down the steps from the doors and found a cluttered room with a long workbench in the middle, and her target sitting on a stool in front of it. _"__How __are __you __feeling?__"_

Her sword tore out of it sheath as she leaped from the top step.

"_HIRI-HI-GITO!__"_ North shouted. The blade ripped out of her hands and into his open palm. She landed on the table, scattering assorted gadgets and tools as she regained her balance. She looked at her hands in shock.

"_How __old __are __you?__"_ North asked the girl.

She shook her head and looked up at him. _"__TEN!__" _she shouted. _"__What __about __it!__"_

The professor shook his head as he examined the katana. _"__Nine __and __a __half, __actually,__"_ he sighed. _"__So __young __to __have __to __deal __with __the __ShadowFlare__…"_ He spun the blade about and held the grip out to her.

"_What __are __you __doing?__"_ she demanded. _"__I__'__m __here __to __remove __your __head!__"_

"_Why?__"_ he asked.

She blinked. _"__Wha__… __you__… __YOU __TRIED __TO __HAVE __ME __KILLED!__"_ she screamed.

"_Did __I?__"_ was his response. _"__Actually, __I __saved __your __life, __though __I__'__m __sure __you__'__d __say __that __you __didn__'__t __need __any __help.__"_

She snatched the sword and spun it about, placing the tip near the scientist's neck.

"_You __had __them __fill __the __pit __with __SuperPotion!__"_ she growled through gritted teeth.

"_Which __doesn__'__t __work __on __PokéMorphs,__"_ North added, _"__but __does __work __on __you, __because __inside __you __is __a __PokéDemon. __How __is __the __Ryuujin __these __days?__"_

Charm stepped back in shock, which was not the best thing to do while standing on a narrow table.

Now she was running through a field of Murkrows and Muumas, shooting some, stabbing others as she headed back to his location.

"I told you to go with them," North greeted her as she dove into the pit area he and M2 were in.

"I'll scare 'em…" she answered with a grin. "Besides, I've got enough people MY AGE saying I look a little evil… But mostly, I _hate _kids."

"That doesn't mean you can't _protect_ them," he replied with a bit more urgency to his tone.

Charm lay back against the berm and started randomly lobbing fire arrows out into the field. "Okay smart guy, what happens to you folks over here then? I'm not about to risk one group for the other! You're what, a droid, a scientist and an injured MewTwo? They're four Rockets and three Pokémon, one of which is a _fully __charged_ MewTwo! They can take care of themselves!"

"That's not the point!" North snapped at her as he shook her shoulder. "The children are the important ones here right now! They need protection more that us old farts!"

She looked at him incredulously. She had run all the way back to assist him, only to have him tell her to… go away…

"You're working as a diversion, aren't you?"

North peeked under M2's bandage again. "The thought had crossed my mind, yes. Would you please get back to them?"

She snorted and rubbed her nose on her sleeve. Then she saw the droid up by the cart.

"What is that scrap pile doing?" she asked.

"Singing," M2 weakly replied. "It's ultimate weapon."

She stood up and climbed the edge of the depression. She turned and looked down at the two at its base.

"Next time you need a dome of fire," she called down to them, "you can always call me. I don't cause shockwaves, but mine is just as impenetrable as yours." She tapped the knocks of her bow to start them afire. She then launched a single burning arrow into the sky. She pirouetted once with the flaming bow at arms length. Above them, the flames from the arrow spun out into a new shield that descended over top their position. Murkrows scattered as the heat drove them away and set the dried grasses at its base ablaze.

"And I don't go nuking myself in the process!" she added. "Yell out if you need me. I'll hear ya!" With that she darted through the wall of fire and back towards the gypsy encampment.

"Impressive," M2 commented.

"She always has been," North agreed. "I just wish she'd see that sometime."

Charm leapt over a caravan and landed at the feet of some children in Jessie's care. They all seemed to have been crying, but now were quite quiet as they stared at the Goth-girl who had just fallen in on them. Jessie suddenly found a horde of small hands grasping at the back of her legs as they on-mass ran behind her and stared silently at Charm.

"That was a big help!" Jessie growled before being bowled over by the kids. "Can't you at least give us a hand?"

"NO! NO! That lady is scary!" some of the children shrieked.

"The feeling is mutual kid," Charm snarked. "Where's PBM?"

Jessie sighed and pointed to their right. "If you mean that weird Pokémon that's with us, she's currently that brown haired girl with the Pikachu over there."

Charm grunted a 'thanks' and headed over towards the girl in the maroon cloak.

"You certainly look different," she told the MewTwo in human disguise. She looked down at the little girl beside her and at the Pikachu in her grasp.

"Pika…" it moaned. Charmed snickered while PBM shot it a glare.

Emirie took a step back from the scary lady, who she noticed was looking at the creature in her arms. "What… what Pikachu?" she stuttered.

"It said 'help me,'" Charm translated as she leaned over towards her.

"Emirie, why not take the Pikachu over to the other kids for a moment, humm?" Peanut suggested. The little girl quickly agreed and scurried away.

"Kids… why does it have to be kids?" the dark lady mumbled.

"They're scared," Peanut stated. "They don't know what's going on, and they're frightened. Don't you remember what it was like to be a kid?"

Charm snapped her a blank, but surprisingly angry look.

"I was _never_ a kid!" she snarled. "They're loud, noisy, smelly, and tend to squeal at the wrong moments." She then looked over at the slightly cringing gathering who were suffocating the Pikachu and sighed. "But, I will assume we must still protect them."

PBM did not miss the fact that Charm has said the word 'protect' through hard gritted teeth. She shook her head. "I feel that's what M2 and the Professor would want."

Charm examined her. "What do you know about those two?" she asked with a gesture back in the direction the scientist and the other MewTwo were.

Peanut looked back over her shoulder. "I've met the man before once or twice," she told her. "He's unlike any of that bunch with Team Rocket."

"You're telling me," Charm agreed. "And you do know that I'm part of 'that bunch' as well."

Peanut smirked. "When was the last time you _attempted_ to stick me in a PokéBall?"

Charm leaned on her bow. "True. Then again, why are you here? You're certainly not Team Rocket."

"Welll…" the 'girl' said with a bit of coyness, "I was created by one of their operatives… which means I still get their emails and memos."

"Emails?" Charm questioned. "Where do you get emails from?"

Peanut pointed at her head. "MewTwos have built-in internet access."

Charm snorted. "I'll have to remember that next time I need the weather update. So what about that other MewTwo? What do you know about him?"

Peanut looked at her 'hand'. "This is the first time I've met him…" she quietly said. She said it in a way that drew Charm's attention. She saw that Peanut was spacing out a bit.

"Hey! Mind FRONT!" she barked at PBM like a former trainer she remembered, which made the MewTwo Human blink and wake up. "What's with you all of a sudden?"

"I'm not sure," Peanut replied. "I've… I've just never met someone like him before… Touched… someone like him…"

Charm gave her a wary look. "Excuse me?" she asked seeing that PBM was phasing back into her fuzzy mind state again. "It's not like you and I haven't run into other MewTwos before."

Peanut shook as she tried to gather her senses. "I don't know, there was something different. He seemed worried about me for some reason… he said I had pretty eyes… When we held paws… I felt this tingle I never felt with any of the other MewTwos."

Charm looked as if she were about to be ill. "Gawd, have you got it bad!" she gagged. "I ought to get you two a room!"

Peanut blinked, and the 'human' image she projected blushed scarlet.

"Not that lover-boy is in any condition for that right now," Charm added as a side. "I left those two back there under one of my fire-domes. They should be protected from those Red Haunters and Muuma out there, and I doubt those damn Murkrows want singed tail feathers."

"You LEFT them back there?" Peanut gasped. The look she received from Charm told her that it was not by choice.

"They'd rather draw the baddie's attention to themselves verses having them go after these brats," she explained. "We still need to get everyone out of here, though. That's why I wanted to find you…"

"Me?" Peanut asked.

"Duh," Charm said. "You can teleport. Do you think you can teleport this mess out of here? Maybe even North and your boyfriend?"

'Boyfriend' brought both hands up to her face as the scarlet face became beet red. "Wha – What! He is NOT my BOYFRIEND!"

Charm looked at her with an expression of exasperation. "Fine… What about tel-e-por-TAION!"

Peanut realized that there was something more important at that moment to look into. She thought for a moment and looked up at the black sky.

"Hang on for a moment," she told the dark Rocket agent. "I need to test something. Come with me."

They moved up the hillside away from the camp. PBM waved her arms over her face and let out a sigh. The disguise she held melted away.

"That's just disturbing, you know that, right?" Charm stated.

"Gee thanks Miss Shining Encouragement," muttered the female MewTwo.

"So what are we doing, anyway?"

Peanut looked about to make sure they were alone. "I want to try something. I don't want to risk teleporting a child in case there's some kind of barrier up. So I'll try bringing something to me instead."

"Like what?" asked Charm skeptically.

Peanut looked to the north. "Well, let's see if I can get something here from my cabin up in the mountains," she suggested. She held a paw up and concentrated. It glowed blue.

There was a crack and a pop. Then something dropped at their feet in a steaming lump. It appeared to be a mass of fused silver metal.

"Umm… what is THAT?" asked Charm, moving to give the lump a poke with her boot toe. The MewTwo sighed regretfully.

"It WAS my flute," Peanut told her. "I guess teleportation is a no-go, for now."

"Great…" Charm mumbled. "So we're down to a long walk with damn near a hundred squealers."

Peanut looked down the hill at the camp. "Well, not all of them are extra young. The ones around the bonfire seem composed enough… oh, they just tossed one of the gypsy's wagons into it…"

"Model citizens – my kind of kids!" Charm grinned. "Come on… let's get back down there before they toss in James. It looks like the Rocket Team is being overrun."

"Yes, um, can I suggest NOT telling the kids you'll eat them if they don't stop crying?" Peanut asked as she brought her disguise back up.

Charm smirked as she started down the berm. "You're taking all the fun out of this, you know that? It's effective, isn't it? Besides, I never said I'd eat them… only BITE them!"

Peanut shook her head. "They might bite back, you know."

Charm sighed and stopped behind one of the wagons. "Okay - Okay! I'll just… threaten them with my bow and arrows."

PBM gave her a scowl that told her NO.

Charm stomped her foot and crossed her arms. "Fine… then why don't I just stay away from them?"

Behind the wagon, some of the older kids now had tossed a barrel of something on the pyre which burst into a huge mushroom cloud of flame.

"Because we can't handle them alone!" Peanut yelped as Butch ran past with his cape burning behind himself. He dove into a nearby stream and sizzled. Charm looked around the edge of the wagon at the conflagration.

"Actually they look like they're having my kind of fun!" she remarked at the older kids' actions. She watched and sensed as the fire that had been launched into the sky was driving spirits back.

She leapt back into the center of the camp with her bow fully on fire. "ALRIGHT BRATS AND BRATLINGS!" she called to the stunned older kids. "You got the right idea, but let me show you HOW IT'S DONE!"

In a whirl of flames and pyrotechnics, she started to shoot burning arrows and toss hand-made ShadowFlare fireballs into the black sky, which would cause the already held back Haunters, Muuma and Murkrows to shriek and cry. Some of the ghost-types would burst in a flash of light. At one point, she managed to cause a small chain-reaction that lit the night in a streamer of screaming poltergeists.

"That isn't helping to control the kids!" Peanut shouted to her as she saw that Charm had managed now to get ALL the children to be afraid, especially of the girl who was flinging fire from her hands!

"So? It's protecting them, isn't it?" Charm yelped as she continued her fiery dance.

"You're scaring them!" Peanut countered. "They've never seen a human who's able to fire off flaming arrows, let alone TOSS FIREBALLS!"

Charm stopped for a moment. She looked beside herself at a tall boy who looked to be the oldest of the bunch. "Hey you!" she shouted.

"M-m-me?" the boy quivered.

"Yea, YOU!" she shot back. "Have you ever seen old news footage of someone using a flamethrower?"

The boy, James and a bunch of the other kids near them all nodded a yes.

"MINE ARE BUILT IN!" Charm cheered for herself, and started firing and tossing again.

"This is NOT HELPING THINGS!" PBM yelled at her.

"That's their problem," Charm called out as she continued with her fireworks. "I'm keeping 'em safe!"

PBM sighed. She shook her head and headed back towards where she had left the Pikachu and Emirie. Keeping up her illusion of being a human was running her energy low. It wasn't hard to do, but to make it accurate looking, that was something else.

"You came back!" cried Emirie happily, as she waved from the cook wagon where she was eating. The Pikachu was sitting beside her, happily munching on ketchup covered PokéTreats and enjoying the show out in the center of the camp.

"Hello there Emirie," PBM said to her as she sat on a barrel beside the wagon. "Finally getting some dinner?"

"Mmm!" she answered. "The nice man in the kitty-suit told us to have some!"

'Nice man?' she thought to herself. Peanut looked into the wagon and saw the other children that Emirie had been tossing the Pikachu between all eating as well. The 'nice man' was busy stirring a pot of chunky stew and humming to himself.

"Meowth?" she asked.

"Dat's MISTER Meowth, if you's please!" the chatty cat said as he handed a refill to a boy behind himself.

Peanut looked about at the settled and almost happy group in the wagon with him. "Well, you certainly seemed to have managed well here," she told him.

The cat came over to her. "Well, I just couldn't just sit around, ya know? Listenin' to all that cryin' 'n everythin'."

Peanut stared at him. "You? You cared about these kids that much?"

Meowth gawked at her. "Kids? Wot'ta ya mean da kids? I'm talkin' about da Pikachu! I mean, he might be a rodent, 'n poisonally, I got dis t'ing about dealin' wit his type, but I ain't gonna not help a fellow Pokémon is distress!"

If one of her MewTwo ears had been visible, it would have drooped just then. "Umm… 'ain't gonna not' is a double-negative…" she murmured.

"Wot?" Meowth asked in confuzzelment. PBM just shook her head and sat back down on her barrel.

Something was gnawing at the back of her mind, and Chef Meowth was not it. Why did she have a feeling that something _else_ wasn't right?

In the meantime, another of the camp's problems staggered up to her, amazed at the silent gathering of children behind her.

"How?" Jessie asked. Her 'Sally' costume was nearly gone by this time, and she seemed to have a lingering smell of having been a touch too close to the bonfire when the barrel of unknown fluids had been tossed in. "How do you do it?"

Peanut blinked at her. "Do what?"

"MAKE THE KIDS BEHAVE!" howled Jessie. "They've crawled all over me, blown their noses on my sleeves, begged for food, thrown fits, and constantly cried 'I wanna go home!' Well, I WANNA GO HOME!"

Peanut looked back into the wagon. "Don't look at me… Meowth quelled these savage beasts."

"Care ta have some Gypsy Stew?" Meowth offered her. "It'll knock da stuffin' out'a dat Rocket Stew we's have any day!"

Jessie snatched the bowl from Meowth and took a bite. She stared at it of a moment. "What… what is in this?" she asked.

"Meat," the cat said. "Told ya it would knock da stuffin' out!"

Peanut flinched at the sight of it. "Any idea what type of meat?" she asked as she watched Jessie scarf the bowl down. Her timing was a bit bad for asking such a question, as the senior Rocket stopped chewing to await Meowth's answer.

"Yea, I made sure it wasn't Meowth," the cat disguised as a man in a Meowth-suit grinned. "I tink dis is grain-fed Tauros."

Jessie continued chewing.

"You're sure it isn't Ponyta or Rapidash?" Peanut asked. Jessie stopped chewing again.

"Naa… dat stuff's too stringy…"

Peanut and Jessie glared at him. "How would you know that?" they both asked (though Jessie's recant was a bit more sloppy, what with a mouth full and such).

"I'M TOLD DAT!" the cat insisted. "Der's tribes down in da Dark Mountains a'da Himalayas dat supposedly eat 'em!" He then leaned over to whisper to the ladies, "An' it ain't human! I've bitten enough o'dem to know wot DEY taste like! YUCK!"

Jessie swallowed then polished off her bowl. "Meowth, if this food can calm your brats down, maybe we can get the others to settle as well! Come on girlie, give me a hand!"

Jessie reached down and grabbed Peanut's 'hand'. There was a light 'pop!' sound.

Jessie looked back at what she was grasping. Instead of a little girl in a maroon cape, she had a larger light purple MewTwo blinking at her.

"M-M-MONSTERRRR!" bellowed from behind them as the children in the chuck wagon began to scream.

"Great Jessie… Just great," PBM stated to the howls of the camp as the others saw the strange looking Pokémon.

"WHY did you do that?" demanded Jessie.

"I didn't! YOU did! When you grabbed my paw, you messed up my energy field!"

"Well how was I to know about your _precious_ energy field!" Jessie yelled at her while flaying her arms about.

Over by the bonfire Charm was trying to calm the kids now, and making a nice mess of it too.

"Aw, c'mon! She's one of the good guys! Don't go all screamin'! Dude! Kid, let go a' my leg! She's not gonna blast ya - although _I_ might if ya don't get off! CALM DOWN! DAMN IT CALM DOWN!"

PBM sighed and looked back at the now petrified children. They had really seemed to like her too.

"I'm sorry Jessie… I think I'll just be going now."

She lifted off and flew east. Charm and Jessie winced. Now THEY had to take care of these screaming kids!

"Wow," Emirie said.

"Pika…" The Pikachu continued to munch on his treat while keeping an eye on the mayhem going on behind himself.

"Shouldn't you be going with her?" Emirie asked him. He looked up at her and blinked.

"Pika?" It looked at the PokéTreat in its paws then at the departing MewTwo. He sighed.

He then pulled up the bottle of ketchup and overloaded the cookie-like food, and tossed it into his now oversized mouth, stuffing it into a cheek-pouch. He tossed the plastic bottle over his shoulder, which bonked the blond haired kid with the Persian doll in the head, knocking him over. The Pikachu then leaped off the end of the wagon and bolted up the hill.

The blond-haired kid promptly threw up on Jessie.

* * *

'I don't care what they said,' Peanut told herself. 'They can watch the kids fine… with that bonfire going on, it's M2 they'll go after now because he's down. And I have to be there to help.'

She looked down. Behind her she could see the Pikachu running through the tall grass to catch up with her. Just behind it, she could see the twisted chrome lump of what had been her favorite flute.

'Blast it all! Curse this no-teleport!' she grumbled to herself. She pressed on, keeping her altitude low and her shield up high. When she reached the edge of Charm's fire dome, she use a psychic lift to raise the shield briefly to allow the Pikachu and herself in.

Under the dome was almost peaceful, save the warmth. The surrealism was that the first thing she found was the droid singing about someone named Rosalita.

"I thought I told you to protect the children," North said when he saw her and her partner. He seemed more than engrossed working on M2's wounds.

"I thought I was needed more here, no disrespect intended," she said as the Pikachu returned to his post on her shoulder, collapsing from exhaustion in his attempt at catching up with her, which was not helped by his over-stuffed belly and the dodging of zombied-humans in the field. "Besides, the kids weren't too thrilled when they found out who or what I was."

"Jessie burst your bubble?" the scientist asked while not looking up. PBM saw him waving his strange rod over M2 again and shaking his head.

"How'd you guess?" she asked as she stepped down beside them.

"I know Jessie," he stated with a momentary smirk. "Meanwhile, we've got another problem," he said.

The flames of the force wall illuminated the area strangely. PBM almost though she saw the scientist crying - or was it just sweat running off his nose? The area around M2 was strewn with potion bottles, medical supplies, spent gauze and the lab coat off the droid. Its pockets seemed almost pulled inside out.

"It's okay Rob… It's okay…" M2 said weakly patting his elbow. "I know what you're reading there… It'll be okay."

"Okay?" PBM asked startled, not liking the way that had come out. A wave of panic swept through her. "What will be okay?"

North smashed the scanner on the ground. He looked at the roof of the fire wall. He wanted to yell at Mauvais, but the flames prevented it.

"What?" PBM asked quietly, surprised by the emotions of the scientist. She knew him to be capable of nearly anything when it came to must-have, need-it-now, last-moment ideas. Something must clearly be wrong for him to be reacting like this.

North dropped his head. "M2 overdid the limits of his clone DNA. When he mixed Earthly elements into his own energy, they weren't compatible… that isn't only a burn mark on him… that's cellular degeneration. And I can't do anything about it here…"

PBM sat down on her knees in shock. Her mind raced. There had to be something… something that could be done…

"The wound healer…" she said.

North looked up at her. "What about it?"

"You said that it stimulates cellular reconstruction, right?"

North wiped his face. "Yes… in non-clone subjects. But it would over-stimulate cloned cells…" Then it dawned on him what she was hinting at.

"But he changed his frequency!" he said. "It's incompatible with his normal pattern… but what have we got to loose?" He fumbled through his pocket and pulled out the healer.

PBM found her paw once again in M2's. His eyes were only slits, but they looked at hers and smiled.

Then, they were wide open.

"WHOA! THAT'S COLD!" he shouted.

North held the strange device away from the wound and gave his friend a startled look. "Cold?" he asked.

"Yes! Like ice!"

"Are you touching him with it?" PBM asked.

"No, it's a beam device… it never contacts the skin…"

North reached into his pocket and pull out another scanning rod. "Never leave home without a spare," he said, and ran it over the area.

"Ah," North said. "This will be tricky… The wound healer will only work on the exact area of the burn… anywhere else over stimulates the cells. That's what you were feeling."

PBM watched North hold the rod and screen in his left hand, and the wound healer in his right, slowly working around the wound.

North cocked his head, not in a happy way, but a better than nothing way. "It's working… slowly… and it's not stopping the degeneration completely. But, you're stabilizing… maybe to the point where you could start re-energizing yourself. At that point, your own body could stop the degeneration…"

"That's better than turning into a blob of Jell-O™," M2 joked.

PBM looked at the hand in hers, as he squeezed it. The tingling was gone. Maybe things were going to be all right after all…

"Excuse me, but I've heard that misery loves company… Mind if I come in?"

North and PBM looked up at the fiery sky, and got wet steamy rain drops in their faces.

"On boy…" the droid said. "Should I consider the self destruct?"

North continued to look skywards as he waved a hand at the droid behind him. "Hold that thought!" he told it.

* * *

Jessie, James and Charm climbed to the top of the hill overlooking the encampment to get away from the now nearly out-of-control mass of children below. They glanced back to see Butch and Cassidy still stuck within the throng. Meowth scampered up with them, having managed to get away from a group of rather nasty kids who thought it would be nice to play Bell the Cat with a real school bell they had found in one of the trailers.

"I's don't get it… where's da yo-yos dat were running dis side show?" he quipped. "First dey want ta serve me up as stew, then PIFF! Vanished in'ta thin air!"

"Weren't you just _serving_ stew?" James asked as he brought the binoculars up to see what was going on over at where they had left the scientist and the MewTwo.

"Dat's different!" the cat complained. "When I saw dis place da foist time, dere were just as many o'dem as dere were brats!"

In the distance, the storm clouds continued to swirl around the fire-dome with lightning flashing and crashing all around it.

"The professor is under THAT? I can't believe he stayed in there!" Jessie said. "I would have left that thing and saved myself…"

Charm shook her head. "How long have you known him?" she asked the lady Rocket.

Jessie pondered that. "I've only met him a few times," she thought as she tapped her cheek. "Honestly, if it weren't for all the contraptions his group provides us, I may have never met him before. And to stay behind with that _thing_… he's crazy!"

"Can't fault him for his loyalty," Charm remarked.

Then, multiple streaks of lightning struck the dome. Charm smiled, as the others watched in fear.

"Don't worry… that can't penetrate my shield," she smugly said.

James gulped. "Yea? How about water?" he asked her.

"WHAT!" Charm yelped, and grabbed the binoculars from James, yanking him down to her level as the neck-strap was still around his head.

"Your friends are good, North," Mauvais said from above the fire. "But they forget that I was originally cloned from the god of water!"

North quickly rummaged through the lab coat pocket.

"R-right side pocket, th-th-third sub shunt downnnn," the droid told him.

"Thank you," North replied as he switched pockets and dug around. He pulled a small black box from it and placed in on the ground between the small group. A red LED lit up.

"Hold your breaths!" he said, and cowered down, covering over M2's face and keeping PBM low. The Pikachu got between them, and the droid rolled to his left to get under the wagon.

Charm watched as an ocean opened over the dome. As if in slow motion, a mass of water crashed and shattered the fire shield, drowning out the flames.

"We've got to help them!" Jessie yelled.

"Nothing could have survived that!" Butch said, having finally escaped the children and had joined them. He was using his binoculars as well, and had watched the conflagration with them.

'Sides, WE'S GOT OUR OWN PROBLEMS!" Meowth screamed, racing behind Jessie and James.

Shadowy figures, moaning and groaning, were heading for the encampment. The smell of the dead floated through the air and berated their noses.

Charm launched a flare. It illuminated what was coming more than she wanted.

It looked like the entire towns of Pallet and Viridian had died and were walking their way. Zombies of people they knew were coming right for them. Giovanni, his Persian, Ash Ketchum, Misty, Brock, Tracey, Professor Oak, the entire Rocket Dance Band… EVERYONE!

"We can't hurt these people!" Jessie said. "They might be possessed like we were!"

"We hurt the boss, and we won't get PAID!" James yelped.

"I told yas dis was bad!" Meowth said.

* * *

The water ran off. Little was left of the dome, save a scorch mark along the parameter.

"You put up a good fight, North, M2… even you, Miss Pea Nut Butter," the red eyes said as they returned to the sky. "I would have enjoyed devouring your souls. But, I must attend to those young ones I have over at the gypsy camp!"

"Pika!"

Mauvais looked back down on the flooded grounds. As the water drained away, a blue glow could be seen where the scientist had been. Then it burst, and the water rushed into an air pocket. But it drained away before it could drown its occupants.

"Oh, ever resourceful my dear North!" Mauvais said from above. "What was that, a pocket force field?"

"Handy, isn't it?" the bedraggled scientist said.

PBM raised her head. The soaked Pikachu flapped its ears between her and M2.

"Chuuu!" it swore.

"Oh, what the hell happened?" M2 asked. "Did anyone get the number of that truck?"

"Professor! Look at this!" PBM exclaimed.

North looked at the wound area, and found little of it left. He scrambled and found his scanner, knocked some water out of it, and waved it over M2. He grinned a wicked smile.

"Well Mauvais! We must thank you!" he said.

"What?" the eyes growled.

"What happen?" PBM asked, examining what had just a moment before, been a horrible gash.

"Water! An Earth element!" the scientist laughed. "Talk about rubbing dirt into a wound! Humm… that probably would have worked as well!"

"I feel better… ugh!" M2 said, trying to get up, only to fall back.

"You're hardly cured, buddy," North said. "But you're a sight better than you were. The water combined with the stimulation the wound healer had done. You'll be fit for duty, until I can get you to a regeneration tank…"

"RAHHHHHHHHH!" the eyes above them bellowed. They then vanished.

PBM felt her hand get squeezed again.

"You came back…" M2 said.

PBM smiled at the prone M2. "Couldn't let a fellow clone down, now could I?" she said, rubbing his head.

He drew the hand he held and kissed it. He sighed, and closed his eyes.

"Pikaa!"

North snorted, and held back a laugh, as he continued with his treatments. PBM picked up the wet rodent and placed it on her shoulder, tail forwards, and gave it a light spank.

The Pikachu laughed.

Suddenly, the ground quaked. M2 opened his eyes, and looked skywards again.

"That was quick," he grumbled. "What's he up to now?"

"He's not alone…" North said, looking down the hill. PBM followed his gaze and gasped.

"Another friend of yours from our last meeting… If I remember, there was little you could do to this one!" Mauvais gloated.

"Doo waa diddy diddy doo waa doo!" the droid said, finally managing to get back on its legs.

An ominous red glow was rolling up the hill. What was producing it was, to say the least, massive.

"It's a HAUNTER!" PBM gasped as she craned her neck upwards as it grew in size.

"It's a bit more than that I'm afraid," North mumbled. "That's a collective!"

"A collective?" Peanut asked. "You mean there's more than one Haunter that makes up that thing?"

"This one's bigger than the one I fought," M2 said, managing to upright himself, though still very much in pain.

PBM looked hard at the apparition rumbling up the slope towards them and cracked her knuckles. "I might not be Charm, but I can burn things when I want…" PBM said with fury starting to rise in her.

"NO!" M2 said. "It's impervious! In this form, it's fireproof, and pretty much energy bolt proof. I never did destroy the one I fought, only winged it from time to time. Black Lugia absorbed it for us!"

"Then, how do you fight something like that?" PBM asked.

North looked bewildered. "You've got to disrupt it somehow…"

M2 nodded. "That's right! One was destroyed… by Meowth!"

PBM looked at the red monster and thought of the chatty cat and giggled. "You've got to be kidding me!"

M2 looked at her and smirked as he continued to get himself upright. "No, really. The Meowth on Level Prime was a spirit himself at the time. He had been killed doing something noble or something…"

"Or something…" North snidely added.

"Act-act-actually it was," the droid replied in defense of the Meowth. "H-he saved the life of Ash K-K-KETCHUM'S Pikachu, and-d-d-d in the p-process-s-s-s saved the life of Jes-Jes-JesSSIE Musashi of Level 5.0."

"Anyway, Rob provided him with ceramic armor that the ghosts couldn't penetrate. He took a sword and flew through that Mega Haunter, then shot a blast of ice back into the hole he created."

"And being that this beastie is extremely hot on the inside," North said, "tossing all that ice in made for an instant boomy!"

It was now only a few hundred yards away. "We need to get inside that thing to burst it? How are we supposed to do that?" PBM asked.

"Without getting absorbed?" North added.

"PIKAA!" the Pikachu shouted, getting everyone's attention. It was pointing up to where the hay wagon had been parked.

"HEY, BIG, RED AND UG-UG-UGLY! YEA, YOU! YOUR MOTHER WAS A BED SHEET AND YOUR DADDY WAS CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST!" was the next thing to catch their attention. Before the massive red creature stood the droid. It was waving its arms about trying to get the monster's attention.

"HEY YOU!" it shouted, even with a dangling jaw. "EAT ME!"

"WHAT!" PBM yelled. She felt both North and M2 grab her.

"No! No! He's got the right idea… if I think he's doing what I think he's doing!" North said.

"He certainly hasn't a soul to get absorbed," M2 added.

"I just hope he doesn't melt too fast!" North finished.

Before PBM could ask, the Mega Haunter swooped down and swallowed the droid copy of North.

"Down the hatch!" the scientist said while scanning what was happening inside the Mega Haunter with his rod. "That was fast. He's at the core already. Everyone back down in the gully, quick!"

Inside the Haunter, the droid watched his outer limbs disintegrate within the heat.

"Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is!" the droid sang to itself the old jingle for Alki-Seltzer. "Time for heartburn! 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 - Boomy!"

Nothing.

"5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 - Boomy!" it repeated.

There still was nothing.

It thought for a moment. "AH! Silly me! I forgot the safety release!" he said. "There we go! 2 – 1 - Boo…"

The core of the Haunter flashed like a strobe. Then more flashes, bursting and light could be seen and heard through the creature, as internally, it was rupturing its collective.

Finally, a massive explosion enveloped the beast, sending flaming debris everywhere. A mushroom of fire and smoke rose from the field.

"ROB!" Charm shouted, as the flames and smoke grew in size. A blast of heated wind struck the defenders of the children, knocking James and Meowth down.

Below them children screamed and wailed as they now could see the zombies outside the camp. They all huddled around the bonfire with Cassidy in the middle of the mass small hands and wet noses.

"Never forget their sacrifice!" someone bellowed in a deep voice. "Tonight, we fight for the children!"

Charm and the rest looked back at the voice. It was the Gypsy Chieftain and his fellow Gypsies as they came out of the woods.

"WHOA! Weren't you's gonna serve me up!" Meowth yelped, now not knowing which way to hide. He finally scrambled up and cowered behind Jessie's legs.

The Chieftain smiled. "Do not worry, my friend. We are no longer under this demon's spell. Now, we FIGHT!"

He produced a handful of PokéBalls, and tossed them all. Instantly, they had a herd of Gypsy Ponyta and Rapidash, fully adorn in Gypsy regalia, waiting for battle.

"Everyone, to your fire horse!" the Chieftain yelled, a war whoop rising from his followers.

He tossed PokéBalls to Charm, Jessie, James, Butch, Cassidy and Meowth, and winked. "Let's make this a night we shall all remember!"

"I think I'll try to forget this night as quickly as possible, thank you!" Jessie said.

Charm smiled and tossed her PokéBall. A massive Rapidash formed, with a fine trailing Gypsy riding sash covering its back. She leapt aboard, pulling her katana out, and whipping it about in the air, howling in the same war whoop the Gypsies were making!

"I like her! She's a natural!" the Gypsy Chieftain said, and drove his Rapidash forwards.

* * *

PBM looked up. North was curled up in a ball beside M2. Part of the hill had been blasted over them. The hay wagon, even though it had just been drowned in water, had been instantly dried by the heat of the explosion, and was burning beyond them. And the Pikachu… the Pikachu was no where…

"Pika?"

It sprouted out from under North, where he had tucked it in as he had plucked it from her shoulder.

"Professor?" she asked. She reached over and rocked the scientist.

"Ow!" he said.

"Are you okay?" she asked him.

"Uuugh…" he said. "It feels like sunburn…"

"You'd better hope it isn't radiation," M2 told him.

PBM saw the tip of the scanning rod pop up in front of North's face. "Uhhh… spot on, as usual… Radiation… That was some blast…"

PBM looked at the scientists with concern. "Are we in danger?"

"You two… no… even the Pikachu. You all can take radiation without a problem… humans on the other hand…" He began to cough badly.

"I told you. I'd get you human!" Mauvais chortled.

"Peachy," North grumbled.

The eyes above them were starting to get on PBM's nerves. Somehow they stirred some disquiet memory deep in her. Perhaps it was the memory of all those faces peering at her while she grew within the genetics tube. Maybe it was deeper, possibly _further __back_… she brushed it away.

"Professor?" she told the curled up shivering man. "Listen to me… You're going to pull through this, okay? Don't for a moment believe that you're not, right?"

"O… kay…" he muttered as he curled tighter. Then she heard the sound of something hissing. North sighed and relaxed. He rolled onto his back, and a pencil-like tube dropped to the ground beside him.

"What?" she asked as she picked it up and examined it closer.

"Adrenelox," M2 said as she showed it to him. "He must have pulled it from the first aid kit. It combats radiation sickness."

"Will it help him?" she asked seeing he seemed out cold.

M2 shook his head. "It fights the sickness. It's not a cure. That will require a decontamination bath, but we can at least clear the radiation this area is still putting out. Do you know how to do that?"

She sensed around and felt the tingle of the rads emitting from the grounds near them. She nodded and held a paw up. She created an orb and sent it around them in multiple circles. It absorbed the unseen energy into itself. She then looked up and tossed it between the eyes again. It simply seemed to smirk as it vanished.

"M2, I was just wondering," she panted after releasing all that effort for what seemed to be nothing. "You normally are able to regenerate yourself, right? I mean, I've always have been able to, but I assumed… anyone else in… my state would too."

M2 looked at her oddly. "Your state?"

PBM blushed. She had not meant to say it that way. "I mean… as a MewTwo… can't you regenerate your body?"

"Of course," he said, now knowing what she meant.

Mauvais laughed from above. "There's nothing you can do, little girl!" he rumbled. "There was nothing you could do the last time, and you'll fail again _this_ time, taking them all with you! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!"

"Do shut up!" she snapped. "I could care less what an insolent windbag has to say to me, you know. I'm busy at the moment." She turned back to M2, who was staring at her in amazement. "Why didn't your body start to regenerate?" she asked him.

He shook his head, more to clear his mind of what he had just seen. "As Rob said," he explained while looking down on the man at their feet, "With the combination of changing my frequency and the elemental discharge, I managed to deplete myself to the point that my DNA was unraveling. You do realize that our make-up is more a man-made poly-DNA than normal, or at least from the material that they started with. But this still doesn't explain why you could change your frequency the way you did, and I couldn't." He reached up and touched her forehead with the tip of a finger."

"What are you… OH!" she yelped. A flash of light and a small streak of pink streaked across her vision. "What was that?" she asked with some shock in her voice and red to her face.

"Just a power reading," he told her as he stared at the finger he had touched her with. "Amazing…"

She took a slight step back. "What is?" she asked with a shake of her head to get the spots to vacate her vision.

'Your energy potential,' he told her quietly in her mind. 'It is a good thing that we did not explode when we touched earlier.'

She blinked. 'Come again?' she asked. 'Why?'

'We would have probably blown up this planet,' he told her. 'Your untapped energy reserves… I could not see the end of them.'

Peanut just stared at him as he bent down to examine North in the same manner as he had done to him. 'What… what does that mean?' she asked.

He looked back at her and smiled. "Nothing… nothing at all," he now spoke aloud. "Right now though, we need to do something about the radiation contamination Rob took."

"Are you okay to function?" she asked him as she squatted down beside him.

"I'm better than I was," he told her as he levitated the scanning rod and took readings. "Why?"

"Because you were fried to a crisp and lying in the dirt a short time ago?" she answered in a question. "Wait… did I say that out loud?"

"Err… yes," M2 smirked.

"Oh…" she chirped while drumming her fingers together. "Ah, well now, what can we do for the Professor?" she quickly shifted subjects.

"Well, first of all, you might want to start calling him Rob, and not 'North' or "Professor' all the time," M2 suggested. "You're not Team Rocket, and technically, neither are we."

"Aren't you Golden R?" she asked. "Isn't that part of Team Rocket?"

He tapped her on the nose with the scanning rod. "Yes and no… The Golden R was formed from what Team Rocket started from, a government program that went wrong. Since then, the two groups work with each other, but tend to have very different agendas. Their motto is 'To Protect the World from Devastation – for All Men and Pokémon' – the rest of that rubbish that Jessie and James spouts constantly was added later when the core group went radical."

"So North… I mean Rob and you aren't the 'Gotta Steal 'Em All' type?"

M2 gave her a blank look. "Ah, no," he flatly told her. He then looked at the readings on the scanner and grunted. "I never could understand this device… but I do know what that means." He pointed at a thin red line on a tiny bar chart the screen on the bulb-handle was showing. "He's stabilized, but he's not getting better."

"He's dying?" she asked.

M2 nodded. "Humans are extremely fragile creatures at times," he told her. He noticed her rubbing her chin. "Do you have any ideas?" he asked her. She nodded.

"Just the one," she sighed. "I've never tried this, and it might just make things worse, but… he'll die if we don't try something."

"He'll die anyway… as will you all!" spat the red eyes, which crinkled into a smile.

"Didn't I tell you to stuff it?" she barked. The eyes blinked.

"What did you expect, respect?" M2 added.

"Give me your paws," she told her fellow MewTwo while he was looking away. He was surprised by her soft fingers touching his and flinched. "Don't worry, I don't bite," she kidded him.

"I was… err… I mean, I wasn't expecting that, that's all…" He turned scarlet. He then saw her face close to his, and he nearly flinched again. She placed her forehead against his with her eyes shut.

"Now, do what you would do if you were hurt and were trying to regenerate. But aim your energy at Rob."

"Are you sure that won't turn him into a MewTwo as well?" M2 nervously asked. He had meant it to come out more like a joke, but her being so close made his voice quiver.

A light lavender pulse began to focus through the scientist. M2 shook his head as her fur rubbed against it.

"I… I can't focus it on him," he told her while trying to look at the man on the ground, and not the pretty lady standing there.

She smiled, which only made M2 more nervous. "Focus your regenerative energies through me then," she whispered to him. "I will be the conduit you require to do this."

"Understood," he gulped and closed his eyes to concentrate.

"I am your conduit," she repeated. "I am your conduit… flow your energies through me…" Her stream of light lavender energy began to intertwine with a darker purple one coming from the male MewTwo. The scientist stirred. He opened his eyes and saw a strange sight.

"Am I interrupting anything?" he asked as he saw what he thought was the two of them kissing. He adjusted his glasses and saw that they only had their foreheads together.

"Pikaaa!" the Pikachu stated as it lay on its belly admiring the two psychic Pokémon.

North began to laugh, but it quickly turned to a painful "Ow! Ow! Ow!" He looked up and stared at M2. "Is he recovered enough to be doing this?" he rasped.

The larger MewTwo squinted at him and floated the scanning rod over to the scientist. 'Quiet you! You're sick!' he sent to him in a private message in his mind. 'And I'm enjoying this!'

"Ahem," North said to him loud enough to get his attention. M2 saw him pointing at Peanut with the end of the rod. When he looked over, he found her eyes wide open and her cheeks flush red. Obviously, that 'private' message had not been THAT private. She slowly looked up into his eyes.

He blinked and cleared his throat while looking down. "Ah… you have to be careful when doing that," he quietly told her.

"Why?" she whispered back.

"Being psychic," North bluntly explained as he checked his vitals with the scanner, "and being some of the most powerful ones at that, when MewTwos stare at each other's eyes, they tend to psychically lock together and all sorts of trouble happens."

He looked back.

This time they _were_ kissing. That was a sight he thought he would never see.

"Like I said… Trouble…" he coughed. The Pikachu snickered.

They kept their foreheads together and smiled as they broke apart. "Do you think he's done yet?" M2 asked her.

"No, I think he's only half-baked," she giggled. The scientist found himself being unceremoniously flipped onto his belly and bathed in the purple energy.

Above them, the eyes glared in anger. "Meddlers!" it spat. "It doesn't matter what you do, because I'll get you all sooner or later!" They vanished with a crack of thunder.

"Party pooper," North grunted while on his stomach.

* * *

The gypsies were having a rollick through the fields and woods. As the zombified townspeople advanced, the horse-Pokémon mounted riders swooped through them with torches and poles to scatter or pop the gaseous Misdreavus that were controlling them.

"Ah, what a warrior!" the Chieftain bellowed from the back of his Rapidash. "That flaming red hair, that war-cry of the Valkyries! She is a natural!"

"Oh, my, Chiefie!" Jessie blushed. "You flatter me!"

"An' yous make me ill," Meowth said from his tiny mount in a moment of rest between panic spurts of speed and bucking. "Chiefie?"

James reached over and poked her on the shoulder. "I hate to burst your bubble," he told her, "but he wasn't talking about you!"

"Huh?" she asked. She looked over her shoulder at where the Chief had gone and saw him over by Charm. He was tying a long gypsy scarf around her forehead and giving a peck to her scarred cheek.

"Humph, Valkyrie, huh?" she snorted and spun her ride about to head the other way.

Charm gave a whooping yell while spinning her bow around her head. No one had called her Gothic in at least half an hour. "YOU'RE GOIN' DOWN MAUVAIS!" she shrieked. She slung her weapon for a moment and reached for her belt and gathered her special black PokéBalls.

From the first emerged a huge Arcanine. But where it's muscular body normally would have been reddish-orange, black replaced that color, with dark blue where a regular beast would have had black or white.

From the second ball emerged a large black bird with dark flames that almost had the look of arcing neon rolling across its wings, head and tail. To others, because it was so hard to see in the black skies, it almost seemed to be in league with those above them until the dark Moltres began scattering the Murkrows it blasted through.

From the next ball came a Rapidash, similar to the one she was riding on now except with a black body and darker red flames.

A Ninetails was the next. And again, like its fellow Pokémon, the beige color normally associated with its breed was black and its light brown tail and mane was dark blue.

Then came her Charizard. He deployed with a thunderous roar and a shaking of the ground as it landed. He spread his wings wide showing his black with dark blue underbelly. But even this beast was dwarfed by her final release.

All of her previous Pokémon at least seemed similar to their normal cousins, save their colors and their augmented strengths courtesy of the ShadowFlare training their master had put them through. But this final one even scared the Charizard. A huge black and muscular dragon emerged, slamming the ground and causing everything near it to fall. Its eyes glowed red. Its wing linings were a blood red and it was so black it looked blue. Its was called DracoFire.

"Umph… overkill," Charm muttered to herself as the roar of her dragon bounced the landscape. She returned it to its ball with an oddly sounding slurp which ended with Draco giving a tiny little 'peep' as he vanished into the emitter. She sighed as she calmly set the PokéBall back on its hidden belt mount. She might need him later, but not right now. She left her five remaining Pokémon to protect the kids, who cowered behind the dark creatures. She looked back at where she had left North and the others. She kicked the Rapidash and charged off.

* * *

"We did it!" Peanut cheered. "The what's-is-ma-hoozits here shows normal levels!"

M2 stood a bit dazed, still a bit unsure about the emotional outburst that had just swept through him. But he did manage to see that the 'what's-is-ma-hoozits' she was referring to was the scanning rod that North had handed back to him after he and PBM had finally broken away from each other and stopped pumping the scientist full of their purple energy.

North seemed just as dazed as his friend, and a bit ill as well. It seemed the only one not affected by all of this had been the female MewTwo, unless being overly effervescent was her reaction to it. They stared at her as she bounced beside M2.

"We did it!" PBM repeated and laughed in relief. "We did it, M2! He's going to be fine!" Her face was bright and her eyes showed that she was no longer worried. Was this truly normal for her?

"Well, there's an experience I don't care to repeat any time soon," muttered the scientist. He rummaged through the old lab coat again and dragged out a Mylar thermal blanket.

"What, getting fried or having to let me do first aide?" Peanut asked him. "Neither one is a good idea, actually."

North smiled at the lady MewTwo as he wrapped himself in the silver covering. He noticed she was still holding M2's paw, and he certainly did not seem to mind.

"Are you quite through?" rumbled around them like distant thunder.

"What!" North shouted at the sky. "Isn't being nuked until I twinkled enough for you!"

All about, red glowing spots appeared. There was the occasional moan of "Brains-s-s-s" for added effect as well.

The Pikachu scampered up PBM's tail having nearly been snagged by a possessed human. It would rather have gone back to eating ketchup on PokéTreats, but as it was, it felt safer on her shoulder.

"We can't blast them," M2 murmured to her, "that's what HE wants us to do… turn against each other."

"But we certainly can subdue them," PBM smiled as she understood his plan. "There's going to be a lot of people floating around in bubbles tonight."

There was a loud crunch beside them. They turned to see North pounding the ground with a baseball bat he had whipped from the deep pockets of the lab coat. Under his throttling of the dirt were two MasterBalls in tiny little pieces.

"Just be careful not to wind up in any yourselves," he warned them as he dropped to one knee in exhaustion.

Charm was the first to North's group, and looked rather surprised at the scientist's condition.

"Wait a minute, what happened here?" she asked them as she pulled her bow and rapid fired through the haze of Muuma that were over the town folks. "The last I saw, the MewTwo was on the ground and you were okay… Are you all right? What the heck happened!"

Peanut spun about at the sight of the dark girl on the Rapidash. "Charm! You're supposed to be with the kids!" she cried anxiously.

"I left my Pokémon to guard them," she told her, which brought a glare from North.

"You didn't deploy Draco?" he asked. "I thought I felt the ground shake a bit ago."

She snickered. "I let him get a little air before I put him back," she told him with wink and a pat to the PokéBall on her belt. North shook his head and wrapped the blanket tighter.

"What?" PBM asked a bit confused. "Would he have helped?"

"No," North flatly stated. "He would have incinerated everything. Torched kids are not saved kids." The silver of his blanket shivered.

"I could have kept him…" Charm started then thought about it for a moment. "No, you're right… we would have had a barbeque! So what did happen? You look awful!"

"Selective nuking of the neighborhood," North explained. "But that doesn't matter right now… Where are the children?"

Charm swiped the air with her katana sending a streamer of flame out through a swath of Muuma and Murkrow while pointing with her bow. "Back at the gypsy camp," she told him. "Like I said, my Pokémon are keepin' them company!"

Peanut and North both stared at her. "Including your Charizard?" they both asked almost simultaneously.

"Of course!" she spiritedly announced. She then saw the looks she was getting from the two below her. "What?"

"Charm, honey," Peanut stated with her arms crossed, "if I was worried that _I_ would scare the children, what do you think having that schizo-Charizard of yours working as a guard is like for them?"

Charm sent off a half-dozen arrows over their heads. "A learning experience!" she grinned.

North pinched his eyes. "Okay, I about to do something I HATE doing," he told them, but especially the dark girl. "THIS IS AN ORDER… I want you all to head back to the kids."

Charm sat back on the back of the Rapidash. "You're fudging with me, right?" she demanded. "I came BACK here to see if you were okay!"

He wobbled up to the fire-horse and put his hand on Charm's knee. "I appreciate it," he told her. "But honestly, the kids take precedence, not this old fart." He looked beyond her and saw the others coming and he sighed.

When he looked up into the dark skies, the two red eyes of death were missing again.

In the forest beyond the gypsy camp, a blob of black ooze fell from the sky and splattered around a craggy jumble of rocks. A feral Meowth who had taken shelter under a few stones peered out and saw the unexpected slimy puddle forming on the ground. Unsure of it, it slipped further back into the rocks.

"Oh, I'm sorry, but no YOU DON'T!" Mauvais snarled as the black goo shot into the cat's nest. A moment later, the Meowth walked out. It un-naturally stood up on its hind legs and brushed itself off of any stray dust the rocks had deposited on it.

"BURP!" Mauvais said from its mouth. The Meowth looked about and scampered off towards the camp.

He burst through the bushes and found himself looking up at the left hip of Charm's Charizard. It looked down at him and snorted a smoke ring.

"Hey big guy! How's it goin'?" he attempted to mimic Team Rocket's chatty cat.

"Harrumph," it grumbled, which caused many of the children to cringe further.

"No kiddin'," the fake said. "Dealin' wit humans is always trouble – and I's do means double!" He calmly walked through the line of dark Pokémon defenders and moved towards the children.

"Hey kids," the Meowth said to them, "what's goin' down? Are dees dark critters scarin' yous?" As he asked, the Charizard flapped his massive wings and scorched a few Red Haunters that had come in too close. The children whimpered and shivered. The Meowth grinned.

"Look, I know a safer spot dan dis joint!" he told them. "Everyone follow me!" He ran around the backside of the bonfire and waved them to move. Most looked back at the line of dark Pokémon protecting them.

Mauvais pointed at a pair of Haunters that were passing high above. They abruptly turned and dove for the Charizard, nicking a wing as they shot past.

The beast shouted a thunderous yell of pain as the Haunter had caused a small and unexpected wound. It then began firing a stream of flames that barely showed any signs of control.

"Quickly! Quickly!" the Meowth called. "You'll be safe wit me!" The children rapidly began to follow his lead into the darkness of the woods.

Emirie looked at the darkness that they were being lead into and stopped. She was more afraid than ever. The cat seemed to be leading them deeper into the blackness. She didn't like the blackness.

"M-mister Meowth, sir?" she whispered. Mauvais frowned.

"Err… yeah, whot is it kid?" he mimicked.

Emirie sniffled. "The gypsies and that red haired lady told us to stay in the camp, sir," she said in an almost inaudible voice

Mauvais didn't like to be questioned. But he did his best to hide his displeasure. "Its okay kid," he lied. "Dey sent me-owth ta find yous. Now keep up wit da others! 'Sides, it looks like ya'd toast yer marshmallows back dere right now!"

Emirie frowned but did as was told. The non-Meowth led the children deeper and deeper into the night.

Charm's Ninetails had been leaping about avoiding the Charizard's rampage. It had seen the Meowth with the children and had thought little of it. But when it finally saw that the kids had vanished, it bolted across the fields through all the zombied people in search of its mistress.

"NINE! NINE! NIIIINE!" it cried as it ran.

"You don't rank me," Charm snarled at the scientist.

North looked down from staring at the blank sky. "Actually, yes I do… But I'm asking you, please… get back to the kids."

A burst of tails and fur shot between them, nearly dumping Charm off her mount.

"Nine! Nine! Niiiiine!" it yelped as it circled the Rapidash.

"No I ain't!" they heard. "I'm right here," Meowth called out from the back of his tiny bucking Ponyta as he heard the Ninetails' comment.

"Nineeeee! Nine! Nine!" the fox-tailed Pokémon frantically barked as it spun about in a tizzy. Charm's face drew flush as she saw the look North was giving her.

"That kind of confirms it, right?" he told her.

"Confirms what?" Jessie asked as she arrived on her mount. "What did it say?"

"She sez dat I went down to da camp and got dem kiddies an' took dem into da woods!" Meowth translated for those who did not know PokéSpeech in a brief moment of calm from his ride.

Peanut gasped. "THE CHILDREN!" she yelled as she bolted away, nearly yanking M2's arm out of its socket. "It has the children! I'VE GOT TO STOP IT!"

"But we need you here!" Jessie shouted, but it was too late. The lady MewTwo was off, sending waves of psychic energy in front of herself to clear a way through the zonked people.

"She's got the right idea people!" North shouted to those who had just arrived. "Mauvais just used me as a diversion! GET BACK THERE, NOW!"

"But what about you?" Charm asked.

"SCREW ME!" North bellowed. "MY ORDER STANDS! SAVE THE CHILDREN!" He swatted the hind quarters of her Rapidash, causing it to bolt slightly away in the direction the MewTwo had flown. "M2, keep that path open for them!"

Charm looked back at the man who was glaring at her. "DAMN YOU!" she shouted at him. "ONE OF YOU stay here to protect this fool!" She reached inside her black leather jacket and pulled out a small black box and chucked it at him, bonking James in the back of his head as he inadvertently rode his Ponyta between him and Charm's throwing arm.

"Ow… what was that?" he asked as Charm spun her Rapidash about in a flurry of robes and angered tears. North slowly bent down and gingerly picked it up. He laughed to himself as he saw what it was.

"It's protection," he told them. "How did she get hold of one of my shield generators? And… she _modified_ it?" He saw icons on either side of a center mounted toggle switch. Throwing this switch to one side seemed to be for the logo for a dome. Choosing the other direction seemed to give the user the dome again, but this time with fire. It also looked as if it had an option of launching some sort of attack rings as well. He looked up at those around him. Butch, James, Cassidy and Jessie all were looking down at him from their mounts.

"Guys, I think I gave an order, right?" he told them. "This will protect me, and I see some of the other Rapidashes nearby. Get going."

Butch grunted. "Why should we take your orders?" he croaked. "You're not the Boss." Jessie and James took a few steps back with their mounts.

North scrunched the Mylar blanket around himself. "Red Rocket OS," he stated. "Specifically Red Rocket OS 10…"

Butch blinked. "Uhh, yea, what about it?"

"Your computer runs on it, right?"

"Yea, so?" Butch barked. "Doesn't everyone's? What's that…"

"Who owns it?"

"The Boss does," Cassidy, who didn't seem to be in the same anti-save-the-brats frame of mind as her partner was in, answered. "He's made millions selling that OS through his Sylph Department Stores."

"Twelve point seven BILLION, actually," North corrected her. "And who developed it for him, and is in fact part owner of said same software?"

Butch seemed unable to answer him, so James walked his Ponyta next to him and whispered to him "Professor Robert North of Tech Lab One, who got co-funding from my father and mother did." Butch shot him a wide eyed look as James nodded. "That makes him a _good_ friend of the Boss, and is _our_ superior."

"Now GIT!" North grinned.

* * *

"Damn him! Damn him all to hell!" Charm cursed as she urged the Rapidash on faster. She wiped her face as she caught up with PBM. The MewTwo was making circles in front of the dark tree line behind the gypsy camp.

"Where are you going?" Charm yelled to the female MewTwo.

PBM stopped and looked back with big wet eyes. She didn't know where she was going. Where had the evil one taken the children? She had no idea where to look.

"I'm not sure," replied PBM nervously.

"You're a psychic," Charm reminded her. "Can't you just SENSE them?"

Peanut whirled about. "I – I can't! When I get nervous… My senses get rattled…"

"Swell," Charm grumbled as she launched a few flairs into the woods, which did little to let them see any further than a few yards in.

A pair of paw landed on Peanut's shoulders and rubbed them. "Don't worry, you probably wouldn't be able to sense them anyway," M2 told her as he soothed her.

"What are you doing here?" Charm barked at him. "You're in as bad a shape as your 'buddy' back there!"

M2 looked at her. "You don't seem to understand the recuperative powers of a MewTwo, do you? Especially when given an accidental jump-start by our host!"

Charm sat back on her seat. "Huh? Old red eyes did something wrong?"

M2 pumped his arms. "Fully charged and restored, thanks to that bath he gave us." Charm nearly burst out laughing.

"He's an idiot, isn't he?" she asked. "He mixed elemental energies, didn't he?"

"Which fused with the frequency alterations I did earlier, which was what was causing all the problems in the first place. Besides, I couldn't let you two have all the fun," remarked M2 with a wink.

Charm leaned over and nudged the blank looking PBM. "You're right, he is a weird one for a MewTwo."

M2 smirked at the remark. "Anyway," he continued, "the way that the Black Lugia is manipulating the frequencies around here, sensing the children would be pretty much blocked, or worst, he'd give us phantoms to chase."

"Great," Peanut grunted. "Do you have any ideas on how we might find them then?"

Before he could answer, the Gypsy Ponytas and Rapidashes arrived. "I hate to be bearers of bad news…" Butch yelped, "but I think we may still have a problem! All those zombies you knocked over to get over here just simply stood up! They're all heading this way!"

Charm was getting fed up with the persistence of these Muuma induced 'walking dead'. She smacked her black leather gloves together and growled to the two MewTwos, "Gather these idiots in one of your protective shields. I've about HAD IT with this!"

A fiery red ball erupted between her fingers. The others could have sworn they saw flames flickering out of her eyes as well. M2 and Peanut quickly snapped all the Rockets, their mounts and a few of the other Gypsies into orbs.

"You can't hurt the Boss!" Cassidy yelped as she could see Giovanni leading a small group of Splice and Dice scientists in their direction.

"Yea, I t'ink I see our paychecks in his pocket!" Meowth chirped in his own little ball with his Ponyta on top of him after having spun about and reversed positions on each other.

Charm snorted. "Not like he doesn't deserve to be a zombie," she growled. She then spun about and fired off multiple fireballs which spread out in a ring with her in the middle. They seemed drawn to the ghosts that were hovering over the people, causing large swarms of them to evaporate and disperse. As if on cue, their human and Pokémon captives tossed their heads back and collapsed to the ground as if caught in an expanding circle caused by a rock tossed into a pond. It continued outwards until the field was full of passed-out townspeople.

"Why didn't you do that earlier?" James yelled as he was released from his orb. Charm did not answer, only spun to the ground with everyone else.

"Make… the… world… stop… spinning!" she whimpered for a moment as she shook her head. She then reared back up and climbed aboard her Rapidash. With an angry glare that told those with her that what they had just seen would be quite painful to them if anyone mentioned her dizzy flop on the ground to anyone else, she reached behind herself and drew out her katana.

"That idiot gave us an order… find the brats!" she snarled. She planted her heels into the sides of the Rapidash and tore into the black of the forest.

* * *

North watched the fiery ring pass over his head. With the others having charged off to save the children on his orders, he was now alone. And even with PBM and M2's healing of the radiation pulse, the aftereffects of the sickness persisted.

He looked at his scanning rod as he scanned himself. It read his radiation as normal, but overall, he was a physical wreck. He trudged on in his silver blanket. In their haste to follow the herd, the loose Gypsy Ponytas and Rapidashes had run along with the rest.

"You seem to have been deserted…" the voice from overhead returned to tell him.

"For a good reason," North answered it. He looked up and saw the eyes again. But this time, they were attached to something. A familiar shaped head, and now a mouth, both followed by a long neck. But a body was not seen. The neck and head slowly stretched out of the black sky like molasses dripping in January. It stopped a few yards over the scientist's head.

"Well…" North said, finding a rock jutting out of the ground to sit on, "you're starting to look your old self, Mauvais. I thought you gave up the Lugia body for your new form."

The head smiled at him - a wicked evil smile. "I haven't… forgotten… my roots, human," it said as it stretch a few more feet to look him face-to-face. "I find my old form useful at times."

North reached out and poked it with a finger. It wobbled.

"Rather gelatinous, aren't you?" he said as he examined the reaction.

"Oh, I can solidify when needed," Mauvais said smugly.

"Can you?" The scientist gave the creature a skeptical look. It saw the stick-like scanner poke out from the blanket. North shook his head and made a 'tsk-tsk' sound.

"Ahem…" Mauvais said, as if clearing his throat, which only made the long extended neck wobble further. "That doesn't matter now," he sneered. "Now that we are alone… let us talk…"

* * *

Charm flew through night, the spirit within the Gypsy Rapidash actually pushing the beast faster than her own Rapidash, which snorted its displeasure nearby. They had left the de-zombied Pallet Towners and Viridianites behind, and Charm was putting wail after lunge into her katana, as she would clear any Murkrow foolish enough to attempt an attack on her or her ride. She wasn't used to riding a white one, but the silk saddle had made for a fun ride. But now, she seemed more focused on dealing with obstructions to her mission.

She glanced behind herself to see how her Pokémon were fairing, and saw PBM and M2 following in close pursuit. The Rockets were far behind.

"#$!%&#!" she cursed. "I can't use my full ShadowFlare powers if they're nearby!" And it only got worse a moment later, as now the Gypsies were in the thundering group following behind her lead.

Far in the back of the group, Jessie and James were having trouble with their mounts. They seemed less inclined to follow their rider'umannyone elsehat'okeBall on her beltrth and the othersr ed.s orders, and gather with the other freed Gypsy Fire-horses. Then, there was Meowth's ride…

The tiny young Ponyta that he rode was hardly larger than himself, and it continued to like to prance and dance more than run. But when it ran, fur flew.

"WHOA! WHOA! WHOA NELLY!" Meowth yelped as it bucked him about. "Hey, Jessie - James! Ain't we missin' someone?"

They looked at the group in front of them. "Nope!" they both said.

"Where's da professor?" the cat asked between bounces that lofted him above his saddle.

"Who?"

"NORTH, YOU DOLTS!" the cat yelled.

"He ordered us to save the children," Jessie told him flatly.

"Yea, but if dees fiery hairballs are all heres," Meowth pointed out, "what's he got ta ride out'a dat mess back dere?"

"He's got that box that crazy girl gave him!" James sprightly announced as he held up the device.

Jessie, Meowth and even the tiny Ponyta stared at him.

"How did you get that?" Jessie asked him.

"Humm? Get what?" James blankly asked. It finally dawned on him that he was HOLDING the device. He reached down in his Jack the Pumpkin King long-tailed jacket's pocket and found a few other of North's goodies that seemed to have found their way in there.

"I… I didn't put these in here!" he complained as he held up a handful of gadgets, doo-dads and an envelope that said 'LAST WILL' across its face.

Being the furthest back, they could still see back to the spot where they had left the scientist.

"Lo-look at that!" Jessie said, pointing at the sight that beheld her.

"He's a goner!" James yelped.

Meowth managed to get his mount to settle enough for him to look back. He saw the long neck and head stretched down from the sky, and North sitting on a rock.

"HEY!" he yelled forwards to the others who were rapidly moving away. "WE'S GOTTA SITUATION HERES!"

"YAH! YAH!" he heard. A cloud of dust covered him.

James and Meowth watched with mouths agape as Jessie spun her Rapidash around and headed back for the scientist!

"I thought she said she would have dropped everything and saved herself earlier…" James said.

Meowth just shrugged his shoulders. "You's learn t'ings every day, James me boy!"

"I'm not your boy," the male Rocket told him with a bit indignantly.

"So, let me get this straight," North said as he tried to figure out what the evil Lugia was telling him. "You're willing to give up the children and the town folks in exchange for M2 and myself?"

"Mmmm, and the other MewTwo as well… she seems feisty!" Mauvais said, smacking his lips.

North nodded. "A fair trade, if we were in the mood for a trade… 3 for the price of how many? A thousand?"

"One thousand six hundred forty two, to be exact…" the beast's head said.

North nodded again. "Why?"

Mauvais looked a bit incredulously at him. "Why? What do you mean why?"

"Why would you want just M2, the female MewTwo and myself?" North asked him with a bit more explanation to his question.

"Why revenge, of course!" the evil creature smirked. "You two are the only ones I can get…"

It stopped. It had said too much and knew it, as North shook his head.

"Correction, you CAN'T!" North said, pointing at the black creature before himself. "Otherwise, why not just eat me now?"

"Maybe I just don't want something exploding in my gullet while I take you down!" it sneered.

"No, it's because you CAN'T! You used the red ghosts to feed you energy last year, but you still could feed yourself… usually in the form of some Pokémon, to which you'd gain their powers for a short time!"

Mauvais looked away.

"I'm right, aren't I?" the scientist grinned. "You evolved, but became even more dependent on the ghosts to feed you, haven't you? HAVEN'T YOU!"

"And what if I have!" Mauvais roared. "I've gained powers beyond anything! I can control thoughts, movements, memories… Even now, some of those think they're off to save the children… I doubt that many will even make it back to that Gypsy camp!"

"I don't buy it, Mauvais," North scowled. "I think you've overtaxed yourself. What was it? One thousand six hundred forty two minds to control, let alone, those of the Murkrows and selective ghosts around. And then there's this zone that we're in. The power consumption must be huge!"

"You forget, I'm USED to that!" the beast glared. "I used to control an army of BILLIONS! They swarmed over worlds, devouring all, leaving nothing!"

"Most of which you lost when you were destroyed on Level Prime!" North pointed out. "Just how much of that power did you really retain?"

"Care to find out?" the head asked as it drew close to North.

There was a flash of light.

North found himself in his seat back on the flight to England. But since when was being shoved back into your chair, pointing straight down the right way to fly?

The unmistakable sounds of an aircraft out of control greeted the scientist. The cabin shook, and parts of the plane's galley were flying back to the rear of the craft, as was a stewardess.

Another flash blinded him, and North was sitting on the rock again. He looked around, and saw napkins from the plane's galley float to the ground nearby.

"In a way, I'm actually saving your life, human!" the beast grinned.

North looked grim at the head. "Allow me some time to consider your… generous… offer…"

"Be my guest," Mauvais told him. "But don't take too long."

North stood up. "I won't." He then ran past the surprised head.

"What?"

"PROFESSOR! GRAB HOLD!" Jessie yelled, reaching down with her right arm, while clinging to the saddle with her left. North grabbed hold, and swung himself up behind her, as the Rapidash blistered the night.

"Run if you like, human!" the evil head said, as it retracted back into the black void. "I will have you… I will have you all! HA HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

_**And the Roll Play Rolls On…**_


	4. Team Rocket's First Stand

**.**

**A F T E R ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**

**T h e ¤ R P G / S**

Based on the FanFic series

**T H E ¤ L U G I A ¤ C H R O N I C L E S**

By Anne Ruecroft & R. A. Stott

and

The RPG

**'****TEAM**** ROCKET'S HAUNTED HAYRIDE'**

Compiled, edited and rewritten by R. A. Stott

Contributing Authors for this chapter -

PeanutButterMewTwo, Charm, babyjigglypuff and ArkNorth

* * *

**Chapter Four**

**Team Rocket's First Stand**

_The kids… I've gotta save the brats…_

It was the only thought in Charm's mind as her Rapidash thundered into the woods. She had not noticed North holding council with the dark Pokémon-Science-Experiment-Gone-Wrong behind her, nor had she heard the yells of the other Rockets or Meowth about it. There was anger and fear in her heart – fear for the children – fear over failing the scientist again – anger over the beast in the sky that was causing all of this – and RAGE over the fact that she had been made fool of by that vile thing and allowed it to take the children.

Peanut spun about with what felt like a rock in her belly. She too had been taken advantage of by Mauvais, and she felt it churn. She tore through the encampment knowing that it would be deserted by now, but hoping that from there she would get some sort of a signal to where she could find the kids. She looked skyward and looked for anything there – Murkrows and Muumas, being the color of the night themselves, were hard to see in this inky blackness. She took a risk by making herself an easy target as she shot up high above the bonfire. From her new vantage point she quickly looked about. Over the field she could barely see the hills. Below her, the camp was easy to make out with that rip-roaring fire still lighting up everything. Nearby she could see M2 slapping freed townsfolk in energy spheres to prevent them from being re-possessed. She saw North and Jessie galloping in her direction. Behind them was…

The head on the long neck stretchingdown from the sky snapped a stare at her hanging in midair as she was. It felt as if her soul had just dropped on that stone that was gurgling in her stomach. She spun and started rapidly scanning the forest that Charm's Ninetails has said the fake Meowth had taken the children.

A clearing nearly five or six hundred yards in caught her attention. Children could be seen walking in a group further into the dark void of trees.

"The children!" she exclaimed. "I see…"

Something bounced off her person shield. She looked over her shoulder. The neck from above was missing. Then there was another flair off her force field.

"Murkrow!" she gasped as they started raining down on her. She fired off a few bolts, but they were swarming in too large a mass to get them all at once. She dove back down towards the fire. As she got closer to the ground, return fire passed by her provided by M2 and the Pikachu.

M2 reached out and grabbed her paw. She spun him around once.

"The children! I saw them!" she yelped as the spin turned into a yank of his arm.

"Hey! That was risky!" M2 told her as she dragged him along.

"It was worth it!" she exclaimed. "They were this way!"

In the forest the black ooze dropped in again and reestablished control over the corpse of the feral Meowth it had used earlier. It shook off a few flies that were starting to gather and cleared it throat. It sniffed itself.

"Ugh, I need a bath," Mauvais grunted as he trotted off towards where he had left the children.

"Hey kiddies! 'Sorry I had to go fer a few minutes! Y'all OK?" asked what kids thought was a very small man in a Meowth suit. Several of the children were still unhappy about being out in the dark woods, but most were glad to see what they thought was the Meowth-Man. "Now we's gotta keep goin' dis way…"

Mauvais laughed to himself as the children started moving again deeper into the woods. Perhaps he could not steal their souls by devouring them as before, but they would never see what killed them. He psychically sent a message to his Haunters to gather in the center of the forest and wait for the meal to come to them.

Charm burst out of the forest just in time to see PBM dragging M2 in. A combination of their speed and the Rapidash's enthusiasm for the run between the trees had brought them in an arc that had passed around the children and brought them back to the camp.

"Damn it beast!" she barked. "What are we doing BACK HERE!" She yanked on the bridle and began to bring the fire-horse about when she saw Jessie ride up to the edge of the hill with North seated behind her.

"Oh, NOW you decide to join us!" she yelled at him. "And riding with JESSIE as well!"

"Should I feel jealous?" James asked.

"If yer smart you would," Meowth muttered out of the side of his mouth. His tiny Ponyta whinnied.

"Hey, I'll let you know that I just saved his sorry butt!" Jessie yelled at the dark Rocket. "Though I have no idea from what…"

"That was our host, or what's become of him, the Black Lugia, AKA Mauvais," North told her.

Charm's face nearly matched the color of her hair. "FREAKIN' BAKA IDIOT!" she screamed at him. "Are you TRYING to get yourself KILLED! Where's that 'protection' I left you!"

She looked over and saw James holding it up. Now her hair was nearly standing on end.

"I needed to bait him," North told them as he brought the scanning rod out from under the silver blanket. He tapped its grip end and read the readings it was giving him. "And if I had something like that on me at the time, he may not have come down to have our heart-to-heart chat."

Charm scowled and released a torrent of air from her mouth that almost sounded like a raspberry. "Okay… what did you two chit-chat about?"

"Oh, life, the universe, and his terms on what he was 'willing' to do to stop all this," North said.

"And those were?" Butch asked.

North drew in a breath and sat upright, or at least less hunched over. "Well, he offered to let the townsfolk and children go in exchange for M2, Peanut and myself."

Charm shook her head. "Peanut? PBM? He wanted Peanut?" she asked.

North nodded. "That would be her, yup."

"Well, don't I fell special now… I'm not even enough of a threat to be thrown in the bargain!" Charm griped.

North gave her a cockeyed smirk. "Meanwhile, why I _baited_ him," he continued in his best way to skirt around Charm's comment, "was so I could get some close-in scans and see just what he's made up of these days. Mind you, the last time I saw him, he wasn't a gooey slime like we're seeing here. He was a solid Lugian-type with the capability of absorbing other's life forces, and even gaining their powers, strengths and minds at times. But when we thought we had destroyed him, we burned his remains to ashes. I still have no idea how he managed to arrive on this dimension as an airborne oil-slick. But, I do know one thing…" He waived the rod about. "He's lost the power of stripping life force himself. He seems totally dependant on the Haunters now, and whatever this stuff is he has as a body."

Jessie got a cross look on her face. "Wait a minute… are you saying that this Mauvais currently can't 'eat' us as you said he used to?"

North scratched his head. "Currently, I don't know that. But he still has Haunter DNAin his system. That means just because he can't do it personally, that his fellow Haunters could still do it _for_ him." Jessie turned pale at that thought.

Charm looked up at the sky. The eyes were gone.

"Well, blinky isn't up there right now…" she grumbled. She saw North slowly look up as well.

"Yea, that worries me," he told her. "So far, every time he's done that, he seems to be off somewhere doing something. I'm still unsure just what his range of powers is, especially in his current viscous form."

"So why does it need the children?" she asked him. "What can he do to them?"

"I'm getting to that," North told her. He then looked about. "Umm, where did PBM go to?" Charm rolled her eyes.

"She shot of over the horizon when she spotted the kids a moment ago," she said pointing over her shoulder, "leaving the rest of us in the dust, I might add. Though M seemed to be dragging her a bit." She twirled her gypsy's ribbon around one finger.

* * *

'I'm almost there…' Peanut was telling herself as she raced through the upper branches of the trees with M2 in tow. 'I'll stop it from stealing their souls, if it's the last thing I do in my life…'

'That's a positive way to think,' the male MewTwo told her in her mind. 'Do you mind not smashing me into the tree trunks not so often?'

She stopped in a maple tree near the edge of a clearing. Below them a few hundred yards ahead were the children. They were in a slow march following the Meowth.

"Look at that," she verbally whispered to M. "That's nearly a perfect impersonation of Meowth. Was he always that good a shape shifter?"

M2 held out his paw and concentrated. "He never _was_ a shape shifter before," he bluntly stated. "He could take on the strengths and abilities of those he absorbed, but he never became them. Mind you, this is certainly a new trick he didn't have before either…"

She looked back at the Meowth far ahead. "What is?" she asked as she followed her partner's lead. What she felt made her flinch and drop the sense she had taken. She spun and planted her back against the tree and heaved a heavy gulp of air. "Oh god… is that what I think I just felt?"

M2 grimaced as he released his own sense. "A corpse," he grunted. "He must have found some way to reanimate the body after killing that Meowth. It won't last though…"

Peanut was trying as hard as she could to hold her anxieties in check. "Why?" she asked with a quiver in her tone.

M2 gave a second quick sense of the body. "Whatever he's doing with it, it's sped up the decomposition process. I can't imagine that body will hold together much longer."

This was bad. Her mind raced to figure out a solution to this dilemma. Should she try an open attack? That might scare or even hurt the children… that was no good. There was always the 'walk right up, throttle it and walk away' approach… but she knew that wouldn't work.

"Alright then," she muttered. M2 watched her spin around the trunk of the tree and take careful aim.

She fired! The cat took the bolt in the gut. It groaned but did not fall.

The children were screaming in terror. Something had attacked their friend Meowth! Already frayed nerves snapped and the floodgates opened as children bawled for their mothers. M2 quickly surrounded the openings in the trees with energy walls to keep them from scattering.

"Very nice Mauvais!" she taunted from the trees. "But it seems you're physically weak when you assume a viable form!"

Mauvais snarled from the body. "Oh it's you… as much as I knew you would be the one to come and attempt a rescue of them, I did not realize you would do something as foolish as THIS in front of your precious children!" He reached into the hole in his belly and started pulling body parts out to show the kids.

"YOU HORRIBLE…!" she shrieked and darted down from the branch she had been on to in front of the corpse to shield the children of this view.

The body grinned a maniacal smile. "You know, you're an emotional weakling… no disrespect intended," it taunted back at her. "I didn't want you here… it was the agreement I made with the Muuma that brought you here. Still, you'll serve your purpose when the game is ready to be played, my dear lady… That you certainly shall."

What looked like black smoke erupted out of the Meowth. It then crumpled to pieces at her feet and rapidly became rank.

In the skies above, the red angry eyes returned.

Back at the forest edge, the flash of Peanut's burst had lit up where she and M2 had flown to. Charm was getting tired of the games this creature was playing when she saw the eyes return above.

"Rob, ride my dark Rapidash over there," she told him as she spun her mount about to head for the flashpoint.

North looked at the Pokémon, which was giving him an evil glare. "Are you sure?" he asked her.

"Yes!" she yelled back as she bolted into the woods.

"Are you sure Professor?" Jessie asked him. "I mean, I certainly don't mind…"

North dismounted Jessie's Rapidash. "No, she's right about this," he told her. "_Two riding on the back of one only slows all three down_." He looked back at her for a moment as she blinked at him. "I heard that from someone somewhere at some time in the past, but I'm not sure when. Anyway, get going. And thanks."

He looked up at dark Rapidash.

It looked down at him. This was one big Rapidash.

"You're not going to eat me, right?"

It snorted.

Charm thundered through the woods. A light blue glow told her that what she was seeking should be ahead. She drew her sword and slashed it ahead of herself, opening the barrier.

Some of the panicked children saw the momentary opening and started for it. But the white Gypsy Rapidash and its rider burst into the opening and nearly trampled them.

"HEY! WATCH IT!" M2 yelled as he restored his barrier. "What were you thinking opening that like that?"

Charm stared down at the angry look she was getting from the male MewTwo. She could see PBM over by a pile of some dead creature. When she looked up and saw the red eyes, she knew it was not the maniacal beast that was making this a night she would hate forever.

Around her Rapidash were small pockets of huddled children, all not knowing which area in this protective pen M2 had created was the safe place to be – they had two strange Pokémon there, one of which seemed to have 'killed' Mr. Meowth, and now the wild dark Goth-Girl with the flames and fireballs had shown up. A few even passed out from the anxiety of it all.

"I came here to save the brats!" she shouted at M2.

"By bursting in and frightening the children AGAIN!"

Charm sat shocked in her seat. That had come not from the large MewTwo, but from Peanut, her friend. She stared at the wet dripping face of what usually was a happy, bubbly lady – so cheerful in fact that she sometimes had to keep from getting ill over all the sweetness this ball of energy had. But now she was bent over, seemingly crying over something dead on the ground in front of her.

"Umm…" M2 switched gears from angry psychic creature to guy-stuck-in-the-middle-of-trouble, especially since the scared kids had been initially panicked by Peanut and her loose cannon approach.

"But… but I came… I came because you were in need of help…" Charm trailed off.

"Well you're NOT HELPING!" Peanut cried with a torrent of tears streaming down her face now.

"HEY!" M shouted at her. Her eyes flew wide as she suddenly realized what she had just blurted.

"FINE!" she heard as she turned and saw the Rapidash being yanked around and sent away towards the far end of the break in the trees. Charm slashed at the wall of energy again with the katana, this time not only dropping the field, but also slicing the two trees that were making up the edge of that barrier.

"How does she keep doing that?" M2 asked himself as he restored the wall. His attention then was drawn to the wall over his left shoulder which was flashing.

"May we come in?" North asked from the back of the dark Rapidash. He was tapping the field with a stick causing it to blink. M2 dropped the barrier and allowed the others in to take charge of the children. He then went over to consol Peanut.

"What have I done? What have I done?" she was whimpering as North brought his ride beside them.

"What's going on?" he asked. "Charm should have been here already… and what is THAT?" He pointed at the pile of festering and rotting bones nearby.

"It seems that our mutual friend has a few new tricks up his sleeves," M2 told him. "It looks like he doesn't need the Muumas to control bodies, though when he takes it on himself, he kills the victim and turns their bodies into some sort of zombie-puppet."

North pointed the end of his scanning rod at the mass. "I take it that was the Meowth that lured the children here?" He looked at the reading the device was giving him and shook his head. "It's a new trick, but it certainly seems limited."

"Yes, we noticed it seemed to have increased the speed of decomposition," M2 stated as he soothed Peanut. North took notice and looked at the two severed trees across the field from them.

"Okay… what happened to Charm?" he asked again with a gesture towards the stumps. "I know the cut of the ShadowFlare when I see one."

* * *

Charm's mad dash into the woods had slowed to a discouraged trot. The gypsy ribbon fell out of her hair after a bit. She stopped her steed and looked back at the cloth as it draped itself over a bush. She slowly dismounted the white Rapidash and tossed its reigns over a branch of a tree near the path they were on. She walked a few yards away to a small opening between some pines.

"YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAA!" she flared. She pulled the katana out and began slashing it about. Branches, limbs and tops of trees began to be severed and diced. She held the palm of her hand out and set a dried dead tree ablaze, then chopped the burning stump into small fiery embers. As the inferno blazed, she spun the blade about and silently sheathed it.

"They don't need me so why should I stay?" she said to no one in particular. She stepped over to a fallen log and sat down to admire her handy-work.

She stared at the flames as she flicked her fingers about, which caused the fires to dance and jump, but also made them remain in a tight circle of about twenty yards round.

Beyond her entertainment something plopped to the ground in a wet splat. It did not seem to bother her – she kind of knew he would be coming anyway.

"Hello Charm," Mauvais said. His Lugian body started to form from the black pool of goo.

"What do you want?" she grumbled. She made her fingers act like they were walking, which made the embers rush in the monster's direction.

He seemed amused by her skill. "I know this might sound a bit silly, but how would you like to have power?"

"I already have power," replied Charm hostilely. She held her hands up, palms out in his direction, which caused the embers to flare and jump in front of him.

"I'm talking about real power," the evil one said as he cast water on the offending flames near himself and doused them. His eyes glowed. "The power to control men's minds - To destroy cities - The power you can only dream about, but always wanted."

"I'm not interested," she snorted. "Besides, you're water and I'm fire. We'd tend to be a bad match!"

"Oh, but I know you," he continued. "I know what you want. You're more like me than them."

Charm stopped and thought about it for a moment. Mauvais grinned. He knew he had her.

"If you join me you can have that power," said the specter. "Augmenting what you already have!"

Charm sat back and crossed her legs. "And what would I have to do?" asked the red head.

* * *

The children seemed to have settled finally now that humans were around them again. That was until…

"Hey kids!" Meowth yelled as he rode his tiny Ponyta into the center of them, having finally broken it of its bucking ways. "Look who's back!"

For a brief moment there was only silence. Then there was nearly a riot.

North had dismounted the dark Rapidash and was with M2 beside Peanut.

"It's my fault!" she cried. "Charm wouldn't have run off if I hadn't yelled at her."

"She has always been a hot head," North admitted, having heard about how she had burst into the area scaring the children as she had. He looked up and noticed the sky. "Umm… he's already on the move…"

They watched North step away towards the center of the opening in the trees. "Who?" Peanut asked and looked skywards as well.

The eyes were gone.

"Mauvais!" she gasped. "He's going after Charm!"

"Without a doubt," North told them. He looked back at them with a weary expression. "I'm not sure if you've sensed it – I'm sure _he_ has. There is very much more to our Miss Charm than just her brusque and dark nature. She commented earlier that she wasn't worth Mauvais' time. I think more he didn't want to tip his hand."

"We have to go find Charm!" exclaimed PBM. "But… but the children…"

"With the Rockets and the Gypsies here, the children will be safe," North commented loudly enough to get the others attention. There were nods from all the adults and a few odd grunts from Jessie and Butch, who were having their hands full keeping the kids calm.

A spark flashed in M2's mind. He shot North a look. He was fiddling with yet another of his gadgets. But this one the MewTwo knew. The last time the scientist had used it was the previous year during the first war with the Black Lugia.

The device had been part of North's belt buckle that few had noticed had a golden R on it. When he pressed the letter in its center, a pair of small pads popped out of either side.

"Rob?" M2 asked from across the clearing. "ROB, WHAT ARE YOU DOING! YOU'RE NOT STRONG ENOUGH!"

PBM tuned to see what M2 was yelling about, as did most of the other Gypsies, Rockets and the children being herded into a group.

"I'm not about to loose Charm to Mauvais!" he said, holding his hand out to stop his friend from coming closer. He had moved clear of the animals and people, much to their confusion. The silver blanket he had worn dropped to the ground and rolled away in the breeze.

"I t'ink da doc has blown his beanie!" Meowth said.

North placed the device on the back of his neck. Something beneath the skin started to glow.

"Whoa!" James said. "There's more to the old professor!"

"Yea, he's out of his mind!" Jessie added.

M2 ignored the grumbling from the Rockets. "Is the crystal okay?" he asked the scientist. North only nodded.

"What is he doing?" PBM asked. She felt a hand grab her and hold her back. M2 shook his head for her to stop.

"Transforming," he told her. "That is a matter-inducer. A while ago, North discovered that he had a crystal beneath the skin of his neck, much like another friend of his who can also transform himself. But, while this person can change at will, North needs that device… and it takes its toll on him when he does use it…"

"Toll?" PBM Asked. "What sort of toll?"

North tapped the inducer, activating it. He snapped his head back and shook as if being electrocuted. Then, a calm look fell on his face, and he smiled.

He held out his hands and a small ball of fire fizzled to life in his palms. He spread his arms apart and watched the flames pop and snap. The children oohed. At least they were getting a magic show…

The fire then flared and started a fiery orbit of his body. At the point where it had started from, it segmented into a second ring of flame that held a forty-five degree angle to the first. Then a third ring formed opposite the last ring. When a forth one formed, North's feet left the ground as it spun at a ninety degree angle to the first. He hovered within these rings as if a nucleus within an atom.

The flames grew in intensity, finally flaring and rolling over and enclosing the man inside.

"ROB!" PBM yelled, struggling to break free of M2's grasp.

Then the ball burst! From the top of the fiery plume shot…

"…A Moltres?" PBM yelped as she jumped back.

"KEYAAAAA!" Charm's Black Moltres cried at the sight of this other firebird.

"YEEEEHAWW!" the new one yelled.

"Yeehaw?" James asked.

"Dat ain't right," Butch added.

"Is dat North?" Meowth questioned, gawking at the fiery bird, as it pulled a fast somersault over everyone's head. It then turned in the direction it felt a familiar tug from.

Everyone just stood and watched the bird fly into the woods, its fire flashing among the branches and leaves of the forest, until it was gone.

"Muuuuuu!"

PBM turned back to the group, just in time to see Muumas flash by, following the Moltres.

"Enough of this," she heard beside her. She looked at M2. He had his eyes closed, and he was taking in a deep breath.

"I will…" he said. PBM saw what he was doing, but stood back, knowing that attempting to stop him would be wrong. She decided to join in.

"Great… now da two psycho-kitties are actin' weird!" Meowth said, watching the MewTwos take in deep breaths.

"I will…" M2 said again.

"I will…" PBM said with him.

M2 peeked at PBM, and reached over and took her paw. _"We will…"_he said.

"Aww, ain't dat cute!" Meowth shot sarcastically. "YEOW!"

Suddenly, the clearing lit up like an arc lamp. Both MewTwos stood in the center of an aura of energy that flowed into themselves. Streaks of light and power in all colors fell on them. The children watched, now more curious than frightened.

M2 turned to the group, his eyes glowing. For some reason, Jessie and James thought they had seen this image before, and felt a wave of fear sweep though them.

Then, M2 smiled. "Pokémon of the Dark, Pokémon of the light… protect these, your charges…" he said with an echo in his voice.

The Rapidashes and Ponytas neighed and whinnied. The dark Pokémon of Charm's nodded.

"And this time," M2 said, addressing the humans, "STAY!"

"Yes sir!" Jessie said.

"Wouldn't think about it!" James added.

"Be my guest!" Cassidy smiled.

"Go get'um!" Butch said with enthusiasm.

M2 and PBM shook their heads and smiled at each other. Then PBM felt a tug on her arm. She looked down and saw a pair of young blue eyes looking back at her.

"Take care of yourself," Emirie said. She smiled as she reached down and mussed up the young girl's hair.

"No harm will come to her," M2 said. PBM looked up at him.

"I swear," he added.

"Dis is gettin' mushy!" came the continuing commentary from Meowth.

The two MewTwos lifted off the ground. They then zipped into the woods, leaving the bewildered mob behind.

"Excuse me…"

The Rockets turned around, and saw some of the orbed people floating into the woods with them.

"Would someone please tell me why I'm floating in this bubble?" Ash Ketchum asked.

"Look! It's Team Rocket!" another orb said, looking much like an enraged Misty.

"Team Rocket!" another yelled. "Stop in the name of the law!" the Jenny orb barked. "You're under arrest for Pokémon theft!"

Jessie just leaned back against a tree and smiled.

"What are YOU grinning at?" James asked his partner.

Jessie just giggled slightly. "For once, we're not to blame! As a matter of fact, we're the good guys in this! She can't do anything to us, and WE have them all in energy orbs!"

"What do you mean you're the good guys?" another orb asked.

"B - b - b - Boss?"

* * *

Charm sat on the log while examining her katana and observing the large black mass that had formed before her. She had heard of the Black Lugia, even fought another version of it elsewhere in some sort of maze-world she once found herself in. But this one seemed more maniacal, wily… even manipulative…

The shape was different too. The head was that of the Lugia, as was the tail. But the body was strange – not that of the water god. It had arms rather than the wings of a Lugia. In this form, it looked more dragon than bird.

"I'm waiting for your answer, my dear…" it growled.

She smiled. "You really don't understand the powers of the ShadowFlare, do you, critter?"

The beast looked skywards and snorted. "I guess you're about to spout that you already have the powers I offered… I understand it, I certainly do. But I'm offering you deeper powers. Darker than the shadow energy that you now use. Powers that would allow you to rule with an iron will. Powers to relieve you of those that would scorn you, mock you, torment you… yessss I feel your pain… you and I were destine to unite!"

Charm glared at the monster over top the edge of her sword. "'You sure your name isn't Grendel?" she asked. "I don't need your powers to do that! My powers are enough to handle my enemies, and those who would mock me dare not do it to my face! Your offer is empty, beast!"

Mauvais smiled. "But not without its reasons… like obscuring the real reason for this talk…"

The beast vanished, and Charm noticed a reddish glow from behind her. She did a quick tumble roll, and jumped to her feet.

A pair of massive Haunters loomed out of the trees. They glared down on the small dark warrior, as she took a defensive position to them.

"FLARE!" she yelled, sending a wall of flame at the ghosts. But the flames seemed to do nothing to them, and they continued to approach.

"Oh, I guess you missed that staff meeting…" Mauvais chortled from above. "When Haunters gather into colonies like these two, they become immune to heat!"

"Only from the outside!" a voice interrupted. Charm only had a glimpse to see the streak of a Moltres flash into view, before it bore through the first Mega Haunter, and out its backside. Then a pair of energy orbs entered the hole in the side of the thing, and it began a bursting and popping sound much like an expanding tin of Jiffy Pop™.

Finally, it detonated as Charm dove for cover. She looked up from behind the stump she had squat behind at the pair of MewTwos that had joined the fray.

"Hey! What are ya trying ta do! Nuke me like North!" she shouted.

"I was 'nuked' by the power pack of my droid going terminal," she heard. She looked back, and saw the Moltres.

"Rob!" she asked with eyes as small as pin points.

"Hello!" the bird said. It had a pair of small glasses still on its beak as a vestige of the scientist it had come from.

"What are you doing here?" she snarled, reverting to her friendly self.

"Hey, I'm not about to let Mauvais have my favorite empress of the night! We need you!" he said, heading for the second Haunter.

Charm shook her head. "Idiot!" She quickly pulled her bow. She set the arrow.

"Fire Strike!" she yelled, and let the now flaming arrow fly. As it traveled, it grew in size until it looked more like a torpedo than an arrow. It blew past the Moltres and bore into the ghost.

"RED HAUNTERS! TO MEEEE!" bellowed from above.

The breached colony exploded into it component parts. Thousands of red Haunters flew into the woods, some absorbing life force energy from the trees they passed through. The trees died instantly, turning black as charcoal, and brittle as balsa wood.

North flared his fires, dusting any ghost foolish enough to get within range of his flames. Then he looked behind himself.

Four Haunters had passed through a tree behind Charm. It shriveled into a blackened husk. It snapped free at its base.

"CHARM!" he yelled.

She looked behind her, seeing the massive dead tree slowly tipping in her direction.

Orbs struck the tree in three locations. Instantly, the tree turned into black dust that covered Charm.

She turned to see PBM, her paws pointing at where the tree once stood. She too was covered in dust. She coughed a black cloud.

"Pblaa!" Charm said.

"Sorry… I thought you didn't want to be squished," the MewTwo said as she held her pose.

Charm looked up at where the tree once was and saw Haunters heading for the red eyes in the sky.

"What does it matter?" she grumbled.

"It matters to me," PBM said. "We need you." Charm shook her head, a cloud of black soot landing all around."

"Look," PBM continued, "I'm sorry for yelling at you… I was just dealing with a rather gross moment at the time I guess… and all this weirdness…"

Charm glared at the MewTwo. "Got THAT right sister!"

The Moltres landed nearby and reverted back into the form of the scientist. He removed the device from his neck and put it back on his belt buckle. M2 stepped up to him, seeing his slight wooziness.

"I'm all right…" North lied.

M2 looked at him with a wary eye. "Right… What's that, 20?"

"15… but worth it, just like the last times…" North said with a slightly bent smile.

M2 shook his head, as North went over to Charm.

"You okay kid?"

She slugged him in the shoulder, which was probably not such a good idea. "What was all that about, Rob?" Charm said, changing the subject as best she could.

North shook his head. "I asked first," he said bluntly returning to the subject.

Charm saw she couldn't avoid it. Her answer was a simple nod yes.

"Good. You've got a bunch of Pokémon waiting for their master." North put an arm around her shoulder, and they slowly walked back into the wood towards the Rapidash she had dismounted earlier.

PBM watched them disappear into the woods. When they were out of sight, she looked at M2.

"15?" she asked.

M2 nodded. "It is estimated by the Golden R labs that every time he uses that power, he looses roughly 5 years of life. Adding the radiation he just took, he's going to be mighty ill when this is done."

PBM looked concerned at M2. "But we cured him of the radiation…"

"We did, M2 said. "But the damage was probably done all ready. Humans can't handle radiation like we can. You and I are children of radiation. The cloning process required a heavy dose to activate the DNA that was used… but in humans, the first thing that it attacks internally is things like bone marrow… the source for fresh blood in their bodies. Kill enough of that, and they will simply die of lack of fresh blood."

PBM held M2's arm tightly. She thought they had saved the scientist… now she'd have to wait and see if they had or had not.

"M!"

The MewTwos heard scientist's call and quickly floated into the woods in the direction North and Charm had taken.

It wasn't far, just around a few trees. Charm was down on the ground looking at the beast. North stood over her, his hand resting on her head, trying to comfort her.

The Gypsy Rapidash lay on the ground, a black husk, the white gone from its hide, its flames extinguished forever.

PBM's eyes flew wide. This is what a Red Haunter's attack does. M2 sighed. He had seen it before.

"This is what Mauvais had… _HAS_ planned for the children, for the townsfolk, the Gypsies…"

"…Us…" PBM added.

North shook his head in agreement. He looked skywards at the red eyes that looked down on him.

"Happy Halloween…" it chortled. Its laughter rumbled through the forest.

North tapped Charm. She got up, taking the discarded scarf that lay nearby the Rapidash. They trudged back towards the children - Towards their charges.

PBM was unsure of what to do next. She had been so worried about the kids she had not even given a thought to the others. Now Charm was going to be bitter… even more, that Rapidash had not needed to die.

"Charm?" she asked quietly. The girl didn't answer. "I… I'm sorry about your Rapidash… and about yelling at you… For jumping at you…" She trailed off. Apologies were so hard.

Charm kept going without turning to look back at PBM.

"'Wasn't your fault," she said shortly. "Would'a gotten… drained anyway. 'Couldn't stop it… I wish I didn't have to explain what happened to it to the Gypsy Chief though."

She still had not turned to face her. It was not making PBM feel any better. Suddenly there was a noise in the trees behind them.

"Now what?" asked North groggily.

"Pika!" came the reply. Peanut's Pikachu came darting out of the trees to land on her shoulder again.

"Pikachu! Where have you been?" she asked. The Pikachu got a nasty look on its face and let loose a stream of high pitched chattering. North laughed, M2 looked surprised and PBM went a little bit red.

"Where did you learn THAT?" she asked, giving it a light swat. Charm looked at the rest of the group.

"All right, I'll bite. What did it say?" she asked at last. PBM's blush went a little deeper.

"It was bad-mouthing Mauvais," she said. "And I sure didn't teach it those words."

Charm snorted. A cursing Pikachu? You don't get one of those everyday.

The clearing where they had found the children was empty, so they headed back towards the Gypsy Camp.

"What the…" Charm griped. "Where's the camp?"

Where it had been at the edge of the trees was now empty of everything. They made a slow climb to the top of the berm that had been the end facing the field and saw that it had moved out into it. North sighed. "I guess they were looking for a more open space…" he surmised as he pulled out his folding binoculars.

He could see the children were all being checked over and cleaned up, while the townsfolk continued to bob about in their spheres, being that no one knew how to burst them.

Meanwhile, PBM's mind was boiling over with a thousand questions at the moment. But she knew this wasn't the right time to ask about the Moltres, and whatever it was Rob has used to transform. It was definitely something she'd never seen in this world. She thought it was weird – in fact, it took the top on her weirdness list, where last her own birth had been the weirdest. Her eyes must have seemed far away as she wandered in thought, because M2 tapped her shoulder. She jumped, causing the Pikachu to hang on for dear life.

"Penny for your thoughts?" he asked her. She smiled.

"Have a couple hundred thousand of them?" she kidded him. "I was just wondering about that Moltres thing Rob did. And about how something like Mauvais could be… M2, WHY does it try to steal souls? I could understand if it just needed to eat, but it seems downright evil. I mean, WHY is it the way it is?" she asked, genuinely wanting to know. M2 had no answer for her question.

"I don't know," he said finally. "You do ask all the hard questions, don't you?"

She blushed slightly.

"Tell her."

M2 and Peanut looked at North, who was looking a bit pale and trying to find a place to sit down.

"Rob?" M2 asked. "I thought we came to this level to get away from that stuff…"

The scientist looked back at the MewTwo. "A bit late for that, isn't it? I think it followed us."

M2 nodded, looking at the ground.

"Besides… I need to sit down…" North and Charm settled on a fallen log. M2 found another across from them and did the same. PBM sat beside him, watching his face.

"It all began on my home dimensional level… Rob's group call it Level 14… approximately two years ago, I was responsible for the death of that level's Giovanni…"

* * *

_"AN EXPERIMENT! IS THAT __ALL__ I AM TO YOU! A MERE __TOY__ FOR YOU TO PROD __AND__ POKE WITH YOUR SCIENTIFIC APPARATUS? A MERE CLONE OF AN ORIGINAL THAT CAN BE DISCARDED ON THE MEREST WHIM? I THINK NOT!"_

_An island in the ocean off the coast of the mainland was the site of a massive explosion. A shock wave rushed away from the epicenter, expanding twenty miles away from the nucleus in all directions. A helicopter en-route shattered and splintered, its remains scattering across the ocean surface below.  
_  
_"I stood within the flotsam of my wrath, a fire scorching the remains of the buildings I had been created in. I felt… remorse…"_

* * *

"Remorse?" PBM asked. M2 nodded.

"I overreacted…" he said. "I found some computers still working in a sub basement of the lab…"

* * *

_"Project MewTwo… day 249… The experiment is nearly complete. MewTwo's progress has been prefect, well worth the failures of the twenty prior attempts."_

_"Twenty prior attempts? Your twenty-first just killed you, fool…"_

_"I fear what Giovanni plans on using MewTwo for… with all the powers he should have, the MewTwo will need proper guidance, and Giovanni is the last one I would trust with this… fortunately, the twentyth project still lives. When he arrives today, I will show him that one… The Golden R has all ready offered to care for my twenty-first creation… I trust them to bring it up properly, more than Giovanni's bunch."_

* * *

"I sat back. I had just killed the man that would have saved me from the torment I feared." M2 dropped his head.

"A year later," North continued, "with Team Rocket under the new leadership of Giovanni's daughter, they started the clone experiments again. This time, they wanted to clone the Legendary Birds, Moltres, Articuno, and Zapdos."

"The Legendary Birds?" Peanut asked. "If they had such a disastrous outcome with making a MewTwo, why try for something like that?"

North tapped his head. "Strength over psychic. Having something capable of zapping you long range obviously was a bit troublesome. So they sent that level's James and Meowth to collect the material."

"Those two bunglers?" Charm sniped.

North laughed. "On that level, those two bunglers were Team Rocket's best agents, and damn good too."

"Where was Jessie?" PBM asked.

"On that level," M2 answered, "Jesse Musashi WAS Giovanni's daughter…"

"Eew…" Charm grumbled. "'Didn't need to know that…"

M2 smiled. "Anyhow, they managed to get the samples needed. But, as they were getting ready to return, a fourth Legendary Bird appeared – the Water God Lugia."

Charm sat back and eyed the MewTwo. "And James managed to get THAT bird's samples?" M2 nodded yes. "Man, he IS better than our James!"

"What were you doing during this time?" PBM asked M2.

"Pika?"

M2 snapped the Pikachu a stern look. "No, I was NOT hiding. I felt a presence to the south of me after I saw that computer file and went to find it. I found that it was my Mew.

"Your Mew?" PBM asked. "You mentioned that earlier…"

"On most levels, especially ones where the total number of MewTwos isONE," North pointed out, "there tends also to be onlyONEMew. These two, being the strongest psychics on their respective worlds, seek each other out. In most cases, it is a friendly meeting. There have been exceptions though, but not in M2's case."

He nodded in agreement. "She lived in the Andes. She taught me to control my rage and anger. I found peace with myself and the world. But one day, one cold day, I awoke and felt a presence other than my Mew. It was full of rage and hatred. My Mew felt it too. The last I saw her then was when she took off in the direction of the OrangeIslands. From there, I found the remaining information from Rob's friends…"

The scientist nodded. "I work with a number of groups, most of which are affiliated with each other in one form or the other. The primary group that I deal with while in this universe is known as the Stratus League – which is kind of a local observing group… but not 'Big Brother'. Their motto is simply 'for the betterment of man and Pokémon'. They, in turn, work with another group who's job it is to record the histories of all these dimensional levels known as The Observers. They reported the following to us… Team Rocket was using a sped-up process to stimulate DNA growth of the clones they were working on. They had managed to make up enough soup to create the Lugia clone they wanted, and were about to infuse it with energy to stimulate its reaction. During this process, a Haunter strayed into the electrodes, and was sent into the mix. The scientist thought that the dark skin that was forming was only a slight maladjustment of a DNA skew, and thought that it would be harmless. And at first, we thought so as well, as Lugias that appear on other levels vary in color, including ones with dark feathers. But it didn't take us long to know that this wasn't the case here."

M2 shook his head. He looked at PBM with sorrow filled eyes. "My Mew felt the consciousness of the creature as it formed. She went to the islands to see what she could do."

* * *

_"Where… where am I?" The black mass turned in its broth. "I'm… alive, yet… I belong elsewhere…"_

_"You are correct creature…"_

_"Who! Who said that?"_

_"I did… I am called Mew… I am here to help…"_

_"Mew, ea? Hummm… psychic Pokémon… Listed as number 151… Power levels, high…"_

_"You… you know of me? How?"_

_"I can tap into something… it seems vaguely un-natural… but it tells me anything I need to know… except what I am…"_

_"I can see you… You are a huge dark creature, though you don't seem whole yet…"_

_"Dark? I am… dark? That's not right… I see… I see myself… I see myself in the waters… the cool free waters…"_

_"You are within a vessel, my friend. A tank of immense size, suspended between cables that are feeding you… I have never seen such things before…"_

_"I am? I am? Trapped… I now feel trapped… my vision… mocking me? I am trapped and it is free? No… NO! This can NOT BE!"_

_"Settle! Settle my friend… you're only splashing the fluid out of the tank. Settle! Please!"_

_"Ahh… ah… thank you…"_

_"It came from room 12, ma'am!"_

_"Someone's coming… I must hide…"_

_"Mew? Mew? Are you still there?"_

_"Yes, but I'm hiding… please hang on…"_

_"Aw, would you look at this mess!"_

_"How did this splash out of the tank? Do you think the Lugia did this?"_

_"Don't know… Maintenance, clean up in room 12."_

_"Look at these readings, Boss… the absorption rate this creature is using… It'll be a danger to us all if it continues this…"_

_"Sigh… You're right… the Lugia didn't show signs of absorbing anything… this one seems to have mutated… Just in case, be ready for termination…"_

_"It's already beyond normal termination procedures, Boss. How should we proceed?"_

_"I want four security officers in Mech-suits waiting outside this lab."_

_"Yes ma'am!"_

_"They've gone… Lugia?"_

_"I heard… termination… my fate is termination…"_

_"I won't let it happen… I promise…"_

* * *

PBM blinked. "What was that?"

"It was almost like I was there," Charm said.

North smiled. He was holding another of those doohickeys he had been pulling from his pocket. This one looked like a CD player.

"Sorry… I used a scanning disc reader with a direct feed unit… feeds the information right to you."

"Next time warn us, will ya?" Charm griped, giving North an elbow.

"Ow…"

M2 nearly jumped up from his seat, but North waved him down. North probably wasn't in any shape to take even a slight jolt like that, and that was the second one Charm had given him.

"Anyway…" North continued, "Black Lugia at this point knew that it was different, and that it would be terminated if the absorption levels didn't drop."

"And my Mew had agreed to save it, not knowing what would happen when she did," M2 added.

"Enter Rose…" North said.

"Rose?" Charm asked.

"Rose Musashi-Kojiro, daughter of Jessie and James Kojiro of Level 6.4," explained the scientist. "She 'borrowed' a spacecraft from The Observers while it was at the Status. This craft allowed her to pass through time and space… The teenager flew back in time and down to the 14th level to prevent the Black Lugia from escaping, and eventually killing her father. But before she could find the Lugia, she was found by the security."

* * *

_"NO! NO! YOU MUST LISTEN TO ME!"_

_"What is all that noise out there?" the creature in the tank asked._

_"I don't know… I'll find out…" Mew exited the room, and followed two guards that were dragging a young woman behind them._

_"So, you're the one who got past all but the final security markers," the Boss asked._

_"It was the only one not on my level," the girl said coldly. "Mother, why?"_

_"For the last time, young lady, I am NOT your Mother! Granted, the resemblance is striking…"_

_"Still, why?" the girl persisted as the Mew peeked in._

_"Team Rocket WILL have the strongest, most powerful Pokémon on this planet. If that means brewing them up, so be it!"_

_"This one is lethal. It will destroy this world, and eventually MY world. It is beyond evil, and MUST be stopped."_

_Mew sensed the girl. She was telling the truth, or at least, it felt that way. As she floated away, she could hear the Boss asking something about "proof" behind her._

_"Well?" the creature in the tank asked as Mew entered the room again._

_"What are you intending to do once free?" the Mew asked._

_"Get away from this place as fast as I can… why?"_

_Mew concentrated. Hard._

_"What… what are you doing?" the beast asked, feeling something diving into its soul._

_Mew felt and probed. She then found something she didn't expect. The face of a Haunter laughing back at her._

_"What is this?" she asked herself._

_"This is what I am," the Haunter said in the beast's voice. Part Legendary Bird, mixed in with a dash of ghoul. I am the Black Lugia! I will absorb you!"_

_Mew retreated from the creature's mind. "You are wholly evil. The girl is right, you will only bring destruction and death… I must stop you…"_

_The Mew proceeded to attack the controls of the tank, dropping the cables that held the beast suspended within the tank. Sparks flew from the panels, and a smell of ozone filled the room._

_"Didn't you hear them earlier? I've gone beyond the point of simple termination…" the beast said, rising from the ooze of the tank._

_Mew fired multiple orbs of energy at the creature. The first struck with conviction. But the second and third were absorbed._

_"You have released me! You kept your promise, small one!" the evil beast said, laughing out loud._

_"No! NO!" Mew psychically yelled. Black Lugia reached down and snagged the cat._

_The security entered the room in large mech-suits. The large dark creature lunged at the first trooper and bit it in two. The second unit started to fire from a machine gun it held. Black Lugia simply swatted the suit with the back of its left wing, sending the security guard smashing into a wall._

_Rose and the Boss entered the room. Rose was holding some strange gun and wearing goggles._

_"Cover your eyes!" she yelled, and let fly a pair of photon charges. They sent the Lugia crashing into the wall, and releasing the Mew, which flopped to the floor in front of Rose._

_"What the…" she said, grabbing the shivering creature. She bundled it under her arm and backed out of the room, watching the monster across from her remove itself from the wall._

_"THAT wasn't very nice, human!" it snarled._

_"Now what!" the Boss yelled, watching the beast stand up._

_"Evacuate the base!" Rose called out while running down the hallway._

* * *

"Rose returned to the ship that had brought her there," North continued as he shut the playback down. "She put the injured Mew in it, and took a satchel of PokéBalls she brought with her. She then sent the ship back to the Stratus with a distress signal."

M2 nodded. "During all this, I suddenly felt a new wave of evil… ghosts Pokémon from all over the planet were heading in the direction of the Orange Islands. And they were turning red - an evil garish red."

"The Black Lugia had powers over them I take it?" PBM asked.

M2 sighed. "Yes… the ghost within itself allowed it to control the ghosts of the world. Soon, it began to send them out to start the absorption of all life. Its ultimate goal was the planet's own Lugia. I attempted to contact it but was unable to do so as I was one of the first targets the black monster sent its minions after."

PBM looked at the sorrow on M2's face, the memories of the destruction of his world racking him. She rubbed his shoulder, and he smiled.

"It was at this point that I was rescued…" he said.

"The cavalry came?" Charm bemused.

"You could say that, yes…" M2 said through a laugh. "For some time, I knew that I was being watched. A non-malevolent force had taken station over the planet, and was watching."

"Rob's friends?" PBM asked.

North nodded. "The United Nations Starship Exeter, part of The Observers group, was on duty to monitor the history of that world. Her captain broke the rules and offered to take the MewTwo onboard. She had found him less threatening than the MewTwos she had seen in other worlds."

M2 laughed. "Well, I had found peace…" he grimaced.

North smirked. "She even gave him his name."

M2 laughed again. "It suited me… anyway, you know pretty much the rest… Black Lugia continued his rampage, searching out the Lugias on other levels. He almost got them all too… and I lost my Mew in the final battle…"

They all sat in silence for a moment.

"Well… I'm rested up… let's get going…" North said, stumbling to his feet. Charm helped him down the steep incline that lead to the camp below.

M2 and PBM watched them. The information helped PBM, but she still had many more questions than answers. She looked at M2. He smiled and kissed her.

"Chuuuu!"

PBM turned the Pikachu around.

"Chu hoohoohoohoo!"

"What's going on back…" Charm said.

"Don't look…" North interrupted her with a smirk. "It's probably not a pleasant sight."

The two MewTwos glided down the hill locked in their embrace. As they slid to the bottom they broke apart. Peanut sighed and placed her head against his again.

"M…" she said to him, "I have to admit… I… I nearly killed this, my level's Giovanni as well." She looked up at his eyes and found them calm and unfazed. In fact, he was smiling to her.

"That is a common theme between dimensional levels," he told her. "And, as Rob noted, considering the number of MewTwos on this one, its kind of amazing that this level's Gio is still with us!"

She blinked. "You're… you're not surprised?" she asked him.

He shrugged. "It surprises me that someone as concerned for others as you are, someone who has the compassion you've shown, would be capable of anger like that. But tell me… I know so very little about you. I'd like to know."

She smiled. "Well, what happened was that several Mew fossils were uncovered in the AmazonbasinofSouth America. That was the big breakthrough… I think on this level that they had one successful project at first who had a story that sounds just like what happened with you."

M2 drew in a long breath and sighed. "Umm, we've met – the MewTwo Prime of this level. He complains about all the other MewTwos out there, and how it keeps him from having a good night's rest with all that psychic chatter about."

Peanut almost laughed thinking of that grumpy fussbudget of a MewTwo she knew in the Orange Isles decked out in pajamas and a night cap trying to sleep with all the racket of the psychic network rattling in his head. She shook her head to vacate such a thought.

"Anyway, from what I found out, they scattered the fossils about between the many Team Rocket labs around the world after the failure of the first attempt. In my group, they decided to try a number of tests all at once. Since they had the data from the first experiment, they could make basic clones easily. What they needed to do was fine tune them better so that we wouldn't be as angry as… Prime you called him?"

M2 gave a half-nod. "It's what the Stratus calls the first MewTwo of a level that has more than one."

She blinked. "And what do they call me?"

M2 thought for a moment. "Well, since we just met, I wouldn't know that. We'll just have to find out when this is all over." He took her paws in his and they settled in the grass. "So where were you?"

"Oh, yes… They were making a group of us… seven in all." She shivered at the memory. "Right from the start I was lonely though… right from when my own consciousness began. Only once did I brush minds with one of the others in the lab. We were both very young at the time… maybe… five or six, mentally."

M2 tried to picture what she must have looked like as a young clone child. What he came up with made him grin. Being so close to Peanut, she was able to tap into the image in his mind of a purple MewTwo child with huge bunny feet. She swatted his shoulder and continued with her story.

"So something went very wrong in the last three months of the experiments. I was able to see and hear around the lab a great deal more as I grew. None of the shadows I could see outside my tube thought I could though. I saw that awful things were happening to the others. I saw their hearts just stop. The first was number two… then number six… soon there were none left but me." Her voice trembled as the memory swept her. "One of them… number three… she was right next to me. She… she just… dissolved. It was awful… I watched her die. There was nothing I could do."

M2 moved over to her log. He wrapped his arm over her shoulder and held her close. She laid her head against his paw and sighed. He really was special.

"It scared me," she continued. "Somehow, I broke the glass of my vessel. I was way too young too be out. They were sure that if I didn't die from whatever had killed the others, I would contract some other disease from overexposure. They sedated me something awful. They first tried gas, and when they thought that hadn't worked, they started in with the needles." She shuddered as she moved some of her fur on her shoulder aside to show the scar left by their messy approach to anesthesia.

M2 reached over to his left shoulder and moved his own fur aside. There was a welt on his shoulder. "Mine was from the fact that they didn't think that a clone could use the same anti-viral agents used on normal Pokémon. That shot nearly killed me."

She thought back at what was injected in herself as she looked back at her own scar. "I don't remember them trying anything like that on me," she whispered.

"Perhaps it was because in your world, they already had the results from their first MewTwo," M suggested. "Yours wasn't the first crew to attempt making an advanced Mew clone."

She nodded. "That's true. And I did survive. They though that my exposure had helped me somehow. Dr. Tsunami was furious when he found out what they had done. He ordered me back into a tube of goo because of my 'underdeveloped lungs' he said."

"Tsunami?" M2 thought about the name. "I seem to remember someone named that in my research crew… short guy, scruffy hair, was fond of mocha-cappuccinos, had glasses that could start fires if left out in the sun too long?"

Peanut nearly broke out laughing at the description. "That's him exactly!" she exclaimed. "He was from the Dr. Fuji Memorial Institute!"

M2 sat back. "The what?" he asked her.

She was about to repeat herself when she realized what she had said. "Umm… oh dear…"

M2 waved her off about it. "Just because they named a research facility after the man who created me… well, I guess in this case, the Prime MewTwo of this level, is okay… at least it is to me. I'm not sure what old grumpy from here would think."

"Did your Dr. Tsunami have a daughter as well?" she asked him.

M2 grimaced. "I certainly hope not. As far as I knew, there were no other family members allowed on the island where they made me. And since I left little of the surface standing when I went ballistic…"

PBM blinked. "You… you _killed_ your Dr. Tsunami?"

M scratched his cheek. "Honestly, I don't know… If he was still on the island, or within that twenty mile blast zone I created, he would have been. But even if he wasn't, my planet was extinguished by the Black Lugia… so he would be dead now anyway."

Peanut huffed as she thought about that. "We have warped histories, don't we?" she said.

"Can't argue about that," M2 agreed. "Why did you wonder if he had a daughter?"

She snickered a little. "He would bring her around to the lab from time to time. She was the one who named me."

M stared at her briefly. "She was the one who named you Peanut Butter?" he finally asked.

Peanut blushed slightly. "I reminded her of her favorite thing to go with peanut butter," she explained while waving her paws over her lavender purple fur. "Mind you, it gets darker when in the clone juice."

He nodded. "Well, she could have always called you GrapeJellyMewTwo."

She thought about that for a moment and shivered. "No," she flatly stated to M2's laugh. "Anyway, during the final month of their experiment, they were afraid that something was wrong. I seemed to have stopped developing. As you can see, I'm not the largest of MewTwos."

M2 shrugged. "You aren't the tallest, that is for sure," he agreed. "But there were the MewTwo of Level Six point Two… they wound up simply being Mews with augmented powers, so they remained Mew size. They also were absolute IMPS!"

He saw the look she was giving him. He cleared his throat. "I like bunny feet," he quickly added in a cough. "You were saying?"

"At that time, Giovanni showed up," she growled. "He demanded to see the results of his funding, and that he didn't want any further screw-ups. He was furious when he found that the others had died, which the others had 'neglected' to inform him about. He made me so mad… he was standing there talking about me while I could hear him and… ooh I didn't like him. 'It's the only one left?' I remember him bellowing. 'Is it at least stable, doctor? What? Another month? I assume it will grow out of those atrocious bunny feet. I wanted a rare and powerful Pokémon, not a baby!'"

M2 leaned over and looked at Peanut's legs. "Gio isn't known for liking 'cute'," he stated. "Poo on him!"

Peanut giggled. "Well, I didn't like him. And that HORRIBLE suit he wore! The man has no taste! And he went on for hours, all about running constant tests and blood samples and all sorts of nasty things on me. And his constant berating, degrading and overall hostile way he was treating Dr. Tsunami got me really mad."

"Uh oh," M said. "You started a power build up?"

She nodded. "I saw the look on Giovanni's face. It was the look of someone who had seen this before. At first he stood back and shielded himself. Then… then he grinned and stepped closer to my tube. He ran his finger along a crack I had created in it. 'You're mine' he told me. I think I would have killed him right there and then if there hadn't been something wrong with me. As it was, I settled for escaping.

"Dr. Tsunami was so shocked when he found out I could speak to him. He had thought I was barely sentient. He never thought to ask his daughter about all the times we chatted when she visited before I broke my glass that second time. When I detonated my tube the third time, he shouted at me as I ran that I'd die within a few days. I didn't listen to him – I just ran… ran for my life.

"For a long while afterwards I was sick. I had found an abandoned cabin up in the mountains with a stockpile of food. But I knew that there was something wrong with me. I knew that I was created from the Mew, so I tried finding them. I thought maybe I'd get some answers with them… but… but I never found them. I'm not sure if they just were hiding from me, or there aren't any left. I just got the feeling they didn't want anything to do withme." her eyes were downcast. Her voice shook slightly. M2 held her close and rubbed her shoulder. "Anyway… I haven't been sick for a while now."

M2 squeezed her. "Just as well then," he told her. She looked up at him. "I wouldn't have ever met you if you were still sick, now would I?" He kissed her on the nose.

"Now then, if you have any questions about yourself," he added as they rested foreheads together, "Rob is certainly the man to ask."

"You certainly trust him a great deal," she said.

"With my life," he bluntly replied. "And visa versa, if it wasn't obvious."

She shook her head against his. "You certainly are an odd MewTwo," she smiled.

"Look who's talking Usagi Feet!" he kidded her. "Come on, we need to catch up before Mauvais does something else."

The new camp had settled in the open field beyond where Jessie and James' hay wagon had been. Charm kicked over a smoldering box that had been on it and sat down with a huff.

"Why the hell did you do all that, Rob?" she bitterly snarked at the scientist. "You look like crap, and you go and do some sort of half-assed transformation and damn near kill yourself in the process!"

"We need you, that's why," he told her as he trudged on a step or two before turning back to look at her. "We need you more than you're willing to admit."

"Doesn't seem so to me," she snorted. "Peanut seems to think she knows everything, and that she can do my stuff! You don't need me."

North sighed and sat beside her. "That's not true," he told her. "She feels awful for what she did."

"Yeah… right…" Charm snarled. She laid back across the box and studied the black sky. Her voice didn't sound like it was directed towards anyone in particular. "You shouldn't have come to get me. She should have let that stupid tree crush me." She sounded angry and frustrated. "I could've taken care of myself."

North nodded. "You're probably right…"

She raised herself up by her elbows and glared at him. "So why didn't you?" she snapped.

He looked back at her. "In this situation, we can not be sure of that. And like it or not, I will protect you if need be, if anything, to prevent that creature from getting at you, or getting what you carry."

"Oh, so THAT'S it!" she now barked. "You're more worried about that beast getting the ShadowFlare than me!"

"HEY!" North shouted at her, causing her to fall back on one elbow in shock. He had never yelled in anger at her before. "NEVER!" he added with a scowl. "As much as I would not want to battle with a Mauvais that had the ShadowFlare, _or worse_, the fact that he would have got that power by destroying you is not an option in my opinion, PERIOD!"

She dropped back down onto her back and glared up at nothing. "You just did damage to yourself… and for something you didn't need… I can tell you're in pain…"

"I told you, we need you… who cares if I'm in pain?" North said.

"Who do you think cares? I'm sure M2 does… I know I do, you're my friend, what do ya expect? You're older!"

"Oh, thank you!" he laughed.

"Well you are, you old fart! You should've let it alone… you shouldn't have hurt yourself," the red-haired Rocket said.

North stood up and looked down at her. He poked her in the belly making her flinch.

"I hurt myself to protect my friends and those around me unable to defend themselves," he told her. "Remember, I fought _this_ Black Lugia before – you haven't. The one you dealt with was a simulated copy that I contrived for that tournament."

"And it ATE YOU," she reminded him.

He stood tall, which he had not been doing for most of this night. "And you didn't notice the difference?" he noted to her. "This one hasn't done so yet, even with numerous chances to do so. Think about it." He started down through the tall grass towards the tents that were being set up.

"Damn him," Charm growled to herself. He had never told her that the Black Lugia in the so-called 'Paint Wars' was a fake. And she had always thought that it had truly eaten him – of course, when he showed up the next day uninjured and covered in paintball splatter, she thought it had been one of his droid copies she knew he had that had been devoured.

Then again, no one had ever told her just how that Black Lugia had been finished off, seeing that Giovanni had sent her off on another 'suicide' mission the next day. Now she realized that it was probably just some mechanical contraption somewhere in storage in Tech Lab One.

"NORTH YOU BASTARD!" she cried to the sky.

"Ah, the cry of the warrior!" she heard. She looked back from her prone position and saw a pair of legs. It was the Chief of the Gypsies. She quickly sat upright.

"Oh! Ah! Sir!" she stammered. "I'm… I'm… ah…"

He held up his hand to calm her. "I understand that you lost my Rapidash," he gently told her.

"Er, ah… I'm sorry!" she yelped. Inside, she was cursing the fact that she was sounding so much like a whelping little rookie!

He shook his head. Why was he smiling?

"It is not to be worried about, small one," he told her. "Did he die well?"

She shook her head trying to fathom the question. What was he, some sort of Klingon?

"Die well?" she asked. "Umm, I wasn't on him at the time… Those damn Red Haunters got him while I was fighting… it was all my fault! I want you to take my Rapidash!"

The Gypsy King shook his head sadly seeing that the gypsy sprit had left the girl. "That is quite alright… I do not wish to take what is yours."

"Take it!" she now yelled stubbornly.

The chief placed his large hand on her shoulder and sighed. "I have to deal with the wives of the six men we lost tonight, not to mention the dozen or so animals taken as well by this evil. This is a time to keep those of yours close, and not to send them off to die alone. Keep your Rapidash, and keep it well."

Charm stood up and spoke with anger, "Your Rapidash didn't have to die! It was my fault!"

He stood away from her. "Being ridden or on its own, it died a warrior. Never forget that spirit, young fighter." He turned and left her for the camp. It was then she noticed that he was carrying his own saddle, minus his charger that he had been riding.

She glared up at the eyes that were returning to the sky. She then darted off into the field.

"How's Charm doing?" PBM asked North as she and M2 arrived in the camp.

The scientist shrugged as he looked back up the hill towards the wreckage of the wagon. "I don't know… she's all mixed up right now. Right now, for some reason she believes that you think you know everything, and that you can do what she does."

M2 blinked. "She thinks Peanut can do a ShadowFlare?"

North shrugged. "Not the last I saw," he said as he sat down on a barrel.

"I was so stupid" the female MewTwo said.

"She's in full-blame-herself mode right now," he added. "She's saying she wasn't any good and that we don't need her." North panted a bit, trying to catch his breath, which caught M2's attention.

"Speaking of full-blame-mode, you need rest" M2 told him.

The scientist shook his head. "No," he flatly said.

"Yes," Peanut replied with a gesture of her paw. Her eyes flashed, and North found himself being levitated into a tent nearby and dropped into some soft sheets.

'Get some SLEEP!' she rattled through his head.

"Yes mommy," he grunted from his back.

In the field beyond the camp, what nearly looked like a red-haired wolf was marking a mile-and-a-half-wide circle in the tall grass at incredible speed. It then leapt a half-mile inwards and made a second ring within the first. Charm stood up after completing her task and looked around.

"Hey you," she harped at a scared Rattata. "Tell all your buddies out here to vamoose, understand? Get the hell out of here, unless you want to be sucked up in hell's fury!"

The rodent Pokémon ran off leaving Charm between her creations awaiting the arrival of Mauvais.

"Do not taunt me with red eyes, show yourself!" Charm said coldly to the sky.

The eyes vanished, and slowly Mauvais descended. For something so large, it landed in front of her without shaking or thumping the ground. It made more of a splat, and then formed into the shape of the dragon-Lugia mix it had appeared in earlier.

North peeked out of the tent. Peanut and M2 had moved to the center of the camp. He pulled out his scanning rod and waved it about.

"High energy buildup southeast of here…" he pondered. He slipped out and moved to the outside of the area of tents.

"I should go find Charm," he heard PBM say sadly from the other side of the last tent.

"I think you should stay here," he heard M2 advise her. "We are the only defense these people have strong enough if Mauvais decides to attack here directly. We can't divide our strengths right now."

"I'm a strength?" she asked.

'More than you know,' North noted to himself as he slipped out of the camp.

"No, really?"

North stopped at the sound of Team Rocket's chatty cat. He saw him off to his left talking to some stray Pokémon that had just exited the field in the direction his scanner was showing the power build up.

"Hey fuzzball," he greeted Meowth. "What's up?"

"Yo, Doc," he replied. "Dees two Rattata said dat Goth Girl's out in da field out d'ere, an' dat she told 'em ta get all da Pokémon out'a d'ere pronto!"

He looked at the rod in his hands. "Tell me, did she say how far you had to get?" he asked the two critters.

The two chittered a reply. Meowth seemed puzzled.

"A mile-and-a-half circle?" he asked. "Wot da heck is dat all about?"

North tapped the scanner in his hand. "Did she make a circle inside the first?" he asked.

The two Rattata nodded a yes. When Meowth looked up at the scientist, he was pinching his eyes.

"Oh, dat don't look good, Doc," he mumbled. "What's up?"

"Meowth, I want you to get everyone to the far side of the camp," he told him. "Make sure all the towns-folks in their spheres are gathered up that way as well. If Charm's about to do what I think she's about to do, there might be a bigger bang here than what I took earlier."

"Geeze Doc, didn't we just move to dis spot to get away from da dangers of dat forest?" Meowth complained.

North sighed as he looked out into the black field. "And in our current situation, where exactly is safe?"

"Ya gotta point," the cat remarked as he headed into the camp. North started out into the field.

"So, have you made your decision?" he heard Mauvais ask.

"Maybe," the Gothic girl answered from the dark. North rummaged through the pocket of the tattered lab coat he had appropriated from his droid earlier. He pulled out three long red sticks which had strings on one end. He yanked on the first and held it out pointing at the sky.

The end of the stick sputtered and sparked. It then fired off a strange flair that shot skywards to a level that a normal flair should not have obtained. He then followed it with the second one to the left and the third one down the center. The three orbs lit up the field below them like a boxing ring. In the center were the two opponents – a large dragon-like creature, and a small girl with glowing red eyes.

North sighed as he approached the outer ring. "You're serious about this, aren't you?" he called to Charm.

"Stay out of this North!" Mauvais roared.

"Shut up, gooey! I'm talking to the lady!" North barked back.

"Who's a lady?" Charm snarked. "Besides, you do not know what I'm doing, so go!"

North laughed and shook his head. "Honestly, why do you always underestimate me?"

"Very true, human," Mauvais actually agreed with him. "Do you really not know this man's reputation?"

Charm's red stare switched back and forth between the two of them. "Hey! Which side are you on!" she shouted to North.

North saw her dark Rapidash nearby and gestured it to come over. "Yours, of course! And I do know what you're about to do. But I wouldn't DARE come any closer when you're getting ready to do what you're about to do. I'm just giving you a choice to come with me before doing something so risky!"

She gave him an angry blank red-eyed stare. "I made my circles," she bluntly stated.

North held his hands up and started to back away. "Come on, kiddo," he told the Rapidash. "We don't want to be at ground zero."

The Rapidash whinnied and followed him out of the circle. North then pulled a miniature megaphone out of his pocket.

"Okay you two," he called. "I'll play referee over here! Have fun!"

Mauvais stared at the human. "Seriously?" he asked. "You have no problems with me devouring her in front of you?"

"Go crazy, baby!" North replied. "As she said, she made her rings. Are you man-up enough to get in them?"

Mauvais sneered. "Then I will assume you have made your decision!" the dragon stated. It looked at North it grinned "you'll be easy to get."

"Rep – u – TATION?" North called back. "Didn't you just mention something about that? Give him the rules of this battle, Charm, if you please!"

Charm put her attention back on Mauvais. "We shall battle… If you win, I join you. If I win, I don't."

North scratched his head. "Well now, that's not the normal rules… Hey Charm! Are you crazy!" North yelled. The Rapidash seemed pretty much to agree with the scientist's question as it whinnied again and pawed the ground with its hooves.

"Not that I know of…" she answered.

North shrugged. "Okay… just checking!"

"And so, we shall battle!" Mauvais said.

Charm held up a hand. "Not so fast blobby," she called out. "I haven't stated the rules of this engagement yet! Both of us must stay in this inner mile radius circle. Attacks can go no farther than the outer circle. If you are knocked out of the inner circle by your opponent, and it wasn't your own action, you must return to this inner ring before you may attack again, otherwise, you lose. If you are sent beyond the outer ring, you lose as well."

Mauvais grinned. "That is fine with me."

Charm was standing in the EXACT center of the circle, glaring at Mauvais.

Mauvais looked to North. "When you're ready, human!"

North peeked at his scanning rod. "No problem," he said as he pulled a starter's pistol out of his pocket. He looked out into the field and saw Charm's glowing eyes staring at him.

The rod beeped. He pulled the trigger to begin and instantly leaped aboard the Rapidash.

"Where do you think you're going?" Mauvais asked as he saw the Rapidash and scientist racing away at high speed.

"DARK FLARE APOCALYPSE!" Charm announced. A sphere of ShadowFlare energy surrounded her and began to grow in size. Above them dark gray clouds could be seen forming below the inky black skies, illuminated by North's flairs.

The sphere was suddenly launched upwards. The burning orb gained energy from lightning generated by the dark clouds.

North kept watch over his shoulder, as he brought the Rapidash around in a turn that matched the outer ring. "Oh, that's going to drain her quickly," he mumbled. "Be ready Rapidash."

"FEEL MY PAIN YOU BASTARD!" Charm yelled. She crossed her arms and then dropped them to her sides.

The ShadowFlare energy fell back down to ground, engulfing the mile radius area of the inner circle. As if in the eye of a storm, Charm stood unscathed as all around her was vaporized. Outside the inner ring, the overburst flattened everything. Most of the tents and a few of the caravans in the south end of the gypsy camp were knocked down by the blast.

The Rapidash tried to hold its ground as North took readings and tried his best to watch what was going on within the devastation. But seeing that his flairs were being spun about by the tornado of wind Charm had generated, it was the least he could do to just keep his eyes open. As he saw the maelstrom start to lift, he urged the fire-horse to head towards the center of it all. The first thing they encountered was that the edge of the inner circle now dropped at least ten feet at the outer rim. Fortunately it rose as they headed inwards.

As they made it into the central zone of the blast he saw Charm lying on the ground, and Mauvais nowhere to be seen. North slid off the Rapidash and limped over to her, to find her hardly conscious, and as he expected, drained of energy. She looked up at him through weepy eyes that were barely slits.

"Mauvais… that bugger fled…" she said weakly, and then fell into blackness.

The red eyes appeared again. North glared up at them.

"You didn't win, you know," he yelled. "You flew! Vamoosed! You lost… And you don't get her… EVER! You left the circle!"

Mauvais laughed. "Oh yes, I know. And I would not have liked to be hit by that attack, but I'm sure I'll have more chances… now that I know what her true power is!" With that the red eyes disappeared.

North snorted. "That's what you think," he chuckled to himself. "That was only her maximum output using ShadowFlare… which is hardly her full potential." He reached down and pulled her katana, bow and quill off her back. He latched them to the saddle on the Rapidash. He examined the sword's scabbard.

"When will you be truly called upon I wonder?" He coughed and returned to the girl on the ground behind them.

He lifted her up to a seated position. He then attempted to do a fireman's lift. In his condition, it was just a struggle to get the light but limp body over his shoulder. He managed three gimpy steps to the Rapidash's side and looked up at the saddle that was at his head's height.

"You… you couldn't kneel, could you?" he asked it, the sweat pouring off his brow.

The horse snorted. To his surprise, it did just that.

"Good boy," he told it as he slung Charm over the saddle and patted it on the neck.

It snorted again with the sound of displeasure. North looked around, then leaned over and looked under the Rapidash.

"Oh… sorry… Good girl! You're a big one!" They headed for the camp.

A mile walk for someone in the scientist's condition was bad enough. Climbing the ten foot drop halfway nearly collapsed him. The Rapidash hauled him up using its bridal to clear its edge.

"What the hell was all that about?" M2 asked. North found him grabbing his jacket's shoulder to assist him to his feet.

North patted the red mop that was hanging over the side of the Rapidash. "Our little lady here tried to take on Mauvais on her own."

"I would have won…" the head mumbled under his hand. "…Used up too much… energy…"

North lifted her slightly. She had passed out again.

"Can you…?" he asked M2 with a gesture to a tent nearby that was being re-staked up. The MewTwo pointed at the body draped over the Rapidash and lifted her off and over to the opening.

PBM dashed over to them as she saw M2 moving Charm into the tent. "What did she do?" she asked with a worried tone. "Is she okay?"

North slowly stumbled in with her. "She'll be okay. She just depleted all of her natural reserves. It was a very powerful attack. Had Mauvais not taken flight from her 'arena' when he did, she would have probably given him a pretty good dent."

M2 noticed the inflection in North's voice. "Dent? She wouldn't have beaten him?"

North sat down beside the girl and moved her red hair off her face. He shook his head. "Probably not using that technique alone," he said. "The current shape he's in, I wouldn't be surprised that he could separate himself into small replicas of himself and be multiple places. He probably was never fully there."

"Why did she even try?" asked PBM.

North sighed and looked down at the girl beside him. "I think she just wanted to prove herself to us… to you…"

Peanut blinked. "Me?" she asked. "Why me?"

North folded his glasses and pinched his eyes. "She doesn't have many friends, you might guess," he explained. "You've worked with her before, and I believe she sees you as the closest thing to being one."

PBM's lip quivered. "Are… you saying that she did that because… of me?"

"Us," North corrected her. "Charm doesn't take being told things that are contrary to her thoughts and feelings. We both yelled at her in one form or another. We both drove her to prove to us that she is indeed needed here and now."

* * *

Mauvais looked down into the camp. It had never wanted the girl. It just wanted to get her out of the way. Its plan was coming along well. Now the only one who wasn't hurt or sick was a bunch of gypsies, four scared members of Team Rocket, and the female MewTwo. He knew that the she was a problem and had to be taken care of next. It had to exploit her weakness, like loyalty and friendship, just like he had exploited Charm's pride and courage. It was a simple plan: take advantage of their weakness, pin them against each other, then pick them off one by one.

He could see them all. Charm was asleep, while North tried to help her, even though he needed to rest himself. The female MewTwo talked while the male listened and tried to calm her. They were off their guard, but now was not the time to attack. It had to plan carefully, and first he had to get rid of the female MewTwo.

* * *

North sat on a mat across from Charm watching her sleep while feeling ill himself. There was a lull in the action. He fell over.

"Ah Rob… good to see you here…"

North opened his eyes. Charm was gone. The tent was gone. Umm… everything was gone… As a matter of fact, everything was white… a white he knew and was not pleased to see.

Then a face looked down on him.

"Aww nuts…" North grumbled. "What am I doing up on the Stratus League?"

"You died…"

"What?"

The Nurse Joy that looked at him smiled sweetly and flipped her clipboard. She quickly checked some vitals stats. "Oh yes… you laid down while experiencing a mild fluctuation of your heart… you hit the ground hard enough to shatter that crystal in your neck. A piece went straight for your brain…"

"Malarkey!" North growled and threw off the bed sheets covering him. He swung his legs out and stood up from the bed.

Now he was standing outdoors in the courtyard of the Stratus League, in only his bed clothes. He looked up and saw Black Lugia fly by, chasing an airborne Meowth, who was wearing a ceramic armor suit and cackling gleefully.

North felt someone tapping on his shoulder. He turned to see Sabrina Natsumi and Jesse looking at him oddly, James and Jazzy were in the background laughing hysterically and pointing at him.

"Excuse me Robert, but is there a reason why you're standing in the courtyard of the Stratus in your PJs?" Sabrina asked.

North turned away from the ladies. When he looked again, he was standing in the Office of the President of the League. A large Pikachu in battle armor and golden white wings was standing on the desk shaking his head while glaring at him.

"PK?" North asked, moving a step closer, but feeling a breeze in doing so. "Aw nuts…"

"Some people say clothes make the man…" the Pikachu said.

North looked down, and saw… pants?

He looked around. He was in his apartment over his lab. He looked down at the friendly confines of what he knew as home, and breathed a sigh of relief. Ziggy the Persian was asleep on his favorite spot on the top of the large refrigerator below him. He looked across the room and saw a bank of monitors that he would normally have stored away when he wasn't using them. They were secret, only to be seen by fellow members of the Golden R. He took a few steps down the stairs from his apartment and saw someone working at his console.

"Gio?" he asked the man.

The Boss looked up at North. "Rob…"

"What's going on?"

He tapped a button on the controls and brought up a picture of his own office. "Isn't that what I should be asking you?"

North looked at the monitors. Many of the others were showing views of assorted locations within Team Rocket Headquarters.

"So… YOU are the leader of the Golden R…" Giovanni concluded.

North glared at him. He didn't need to say a thing. It would have been foolish to try.

"And?" he asked.

Giovanni leaned back in North's favorite chair. "You know I've been trying to find the Golden R's leader… Kind of a hobby of mine… but you would have known that, wouldn't you?"

North crossed his arms. "So?"

"My grandfather may have insisted on forming the Golden R," the Boss continued, "but I'm not inclined to see it continue." He reached over and flicked a switch on the console, and a massive vault door next to the end of the monitors began to swing open.

"It's amazing what you have stashed around here…" he smiled. "It's going to be fun rummaging about this place."

North nodded his head at the refrigerator. "Just don't open any of those bottles in the 'fridge… unless you want to vaporize the planet."

Gio looked at North. "I'll make a note of that…" he said. "We've know each other for a long time Rob. Clear back to when I took over Team Rocket. I always trusted you. When did you start stabbing me in the back?"

North gave Giovanni a calm look. "When you stole my first attempt to get home… All you managed to do was wreck it anyway…"

Giovanni nodded. "So you knew…"

"I always suspected. It wasn't until recently that I discovered the actual truth."

"And how many of my plans have you foiled?" the Boss asked, closely examining a blinking light on the console.

"A few… Actually, I spent most of my time saving your agents when they were 'blasting off' - what goes up, usually has to come down."

Giovanni laughed at that thought. "Well, they'll just have to learn how to fly, now shan't they?"

North cocked his head. "That'll drive up mortality rates."

"I'm interested in only the best. You saving teams like Jessie and James only hinders Team Rocket."

North looked over his glasses at Giovanni. "Like what you did to Myamoto?"

Giovanni snapped a glare at the scientist. "You know, that was the only other time I stole from you."

North smirked and shook his head. "If I believed that, I would run for president. I take it you take me for a fool…"

"You obviously took me for one," Giovanni said as he reached into his jacket. "One that I'll make sure never happens again!"

He saw the barrel only briefly. A streak of light ran up it as it exited the inner pocket of Giovanni's blazer. Then there was a flash. Then there was darkness.

As he fell into the dark, North noticed Ziggy. The Persian had not flinched.

_"Is he breathing yet?"_

_"Has anyone found the Nurse Joy orb yet?"_

_"The Boss is here, let him in!"_

North could feel someone pressing on him. And this person was saying _"Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!"_each time they pressed on his chest.

_"Standby, let the Pikachu in there!"_

'What?' ran through North's mind.

_"CHUUUUUUUU!"_

North sat upright, then fell back down ON THE PIKACHU, and got another zap!

North opened his eyes, and saw Charm looking down on him. "Idiot! Why did you do it!"

"Never give up! Never surrender!" North replied.

"Rob?"

The scientist looked up at the Boss.

"Hey… you're looking better," North said seeing the Boss no longer looking like a zombie.

"And you look like someone who's been run down by a herd of Toros!" he told him.

North snickered. "Yea… I must be a mess…"

Giovanni bent over. Charm glared at him as she help North's head in her lap. "I've been told a number of stories all ready," the Boss told him. "We must discuss some of these later…"

North looked up at him startled. He then settled down. "Oh yea… wrong d-level…" he mumbled. He closed his eyes again.

Charm gave him a shot to the shoulder. "Oh no you don't… You're gonna tell me what happened!"

North grimaced. "What?"

"What happened when I zapped Mauvais?"

North shook his head. "You cleared a mile of timber, but the bird flew the coop before it hit…"

"DAMN!" she said, pounding her hip with her fist.

North took Charm's other hand and patted it. "Thanks kid. You did good…"

Charm blew her hair out of her face. "Phaa! I didn't get the turkey!"

"Chicken…" North corrected. "He ran, you didn't. And earlier, he attempted his version of stabbing you in the back. You stood your ground. Well done…"

M2 walked into the tent, carrying an orb with a Nurse Joy, and he popped it.

"Your patient, Nurse Joy!" he said, helping the care giver up from the blankets she fell into.

"M2, you shouldn't have…" North mumbled.

"Now Mr. North, your Pokémon is doing the right thing," the nurse told her patient.

There was silence in the tent as North looked at Joy and M2.

"Ah, Nurse… M2 is not mine…" North warned her. "He's a friend."

"A common mistake," the MewTwo said with a shrug.

North then looked at the expression that Giovanni was giving M2. This was going to be hard to explain.

PBM stood outside the tent. With so many bodies inside for the emergency, she knew it would be best just to wait.

"Yo, PBM," Meowth called to her. "Yer kid friend was lookin' for ya."

PBM looked at the little PokéCat, as he pointed over towards a tent to the left.

"Are you sure? We've been lead about today like we were on leashes…" she sighed.

"Hey, it's me! Da real t'ing!" Meowth yelped, pulling on his fur. "'Sides, didn't dat fake fall apart in da woods back dere?"

PBM shrugged. Same smug intolerable Meowth… She walked over to the tent.

"Emi? Are you here?" she asked.

"Ha ha ha ha ha!" she heard, as someone pushed her into the tent. She turned to see the chatty cat, but with a pair of red eyes. A Muuma appeared over his head. It grinned and vanished. Meowth fell over in a daze.

"Welcome, my dear, said the spider to the fly!" a deep booming voice said. Then the flaps to the tent vanished, and she felt the sudden acceleration of being lifted skywards.

M2 burst from North's tent and looked up sensing that something was very wrong.

The moon was back. Why had the Murkrows left?

In its glare he saw the tent, which now was more a net, flying up out of the camp.

"PEANUUUUUUT!" he yelled, as he ran after her. "Peanut!"

He stood alone in the grass outside the camp looking skywards. Her presence vanished to him, even though the net was still visible.

An aura of energy wrapped the MewTwo. He launched himself in pursuit of the trap.

**_And the Roll Play Rolls On…_**


End file.
